swell and rage with heat that the wound causeth a sharp pain And again while its lips grow flaggy and do pitch or settle that though the wound be also open yet it is almost without pain From whence I collected That the solution or loosing of the con-tinual or that which held together causeth pain indeed in the time of its making but that in its being made if that which is inconvenient shall not have access to it the thing solved doth scarce pain the party Therefore I supposed with my self that the solution doth not pain as it is a separation of the con-tinual and much lesse doth the heat cause pain which arose in the wound the third day after whose property indeed it is onely to heat but not to cause pain But if any external or forreign heat being extended into a degree doth burn it causeth pain indeed but not as heat but as it is that which stirs up and at least which nourisheth the solution of the Con-tinual And besides the indispositions of Acrimony or sharpnesse and as proceeding from another Root which vitiates our Family administration Truly because a body or solid part doth not feel of it self Because it is rather a dead Carkase Sensation or the act of feeling therefore hath regard indeed unto the Life alone And since the Schooles knew that the Brain had none or atleastwise scarce an obscure Sensation They therefore had rather believe the sinew to be the primary subject of sence motion and pain To wit that the Brain was indeed the Fountainous Beginning of sense and motion yet they made the Nerve the immediate subject of pain and sense But notwithstanding they would have motion although something a more material thing to depend on a deeper arbitration of the Will and to be subjected thereunto To wit so as that the Will is the Commandative principle of motion but the sinew to be the derivative Organ of the command of the Will And lastly the muscle to be the executive Instrument of the Will But they understand Sensation in the sinew as in its subject to be made through the mediation of the animal spirit which they call Animal being drawn indeed from the Arteries but re-cocted in the Brain for its own uses They therefore acknowledged that the Nerve is by it self indeed without feeling even as the Brain and other solid members are wherefore they will have the animal Spirits to be the primitive Feelers and effective Movers of Sense and Motion it self With whom I do not as yet agree as neither in this That the sinew is the Organ and chief Subject of all Sensation For who knows not that in a healthy person every part of his skin is sensible yet that it carries not a sinew under it For I do not grant that a sensible object being conceived in the parts without a Nerve the Spirit doth by a Retrograde motion run back into the sinew that it may communicate that sensible Conception unto the Brain as unto the original of the Senses that by returning from thence a sense of pain or well-pleasing may then at length be effected in the part that is hurt or touched on For the Urine-pipe causeth exceeding pain in the Borders without the implanting of any sinew So also hollow Ulcers are oftentimes filled with sensitive flesh neither yet do Nerves grow anew therein seeing the parts of the first Constitution being once taken away do not grow again as neither are those parts which are of the first Constitution being consumed by rottennesse any more restored But the stupidity and unsensiblenesse of the Leprosie do fitly offer themselves in this place For truly they at all feel not a Bodkin or Needle being thrust into their flesh Must we therefore believe that Leprous persons are deprived of sinews Or that in those the Nerves cut off from the fleshy membrane That they are deprived of Animal Spirit and bereft of Life and that they are stopped even as they are said to be in those that have the Palsie Shall therefore the sinews of touching be stopped up throughout their whole Body and shall their sinews be serviceable onely for a free motion Shall I say the motive sinews be now destitute of sense alone I confesse indeed that from the formost part of the Brain there are sinews dispersed unto the eyes eares Pallat and Tongue which serve onely for feeling neither that they do decline unto the muscles which are as it were the proper Instruments of motion But none can also deny but that the sinews dedicated unto motion and the which go out through both the turning joynts do also bestow sense or feeling For what if in the Leprosie a sinew that is the effecter of motion be now moved by the Animal spirit neither yet hath the faculty of sence Why therefore in the Palsie under a hurting of the same sinew is as well motion as sense taken away but in the Leprosie is sense onely taken away First of all The Schooles hold the Leprosie to be uncurable and also a universal Cancer of the Body For while they suppose a particular Cancer to be uncurable much more a universal one Which prattle of Galen was to this purpose framed That by the impossibilities of healing he might excuse his own Ignorances and the sloathfulnesses and dis-clemency of taking paines For a Cancer in the flesh is of a most sharp pain and of a continual devouting But a Leprosie in the flesh is without pain I see not therefore after what manner the Leprosie among the Galenists shall be a Cancer In the next place Paracelsus errs who thinks the Leprosie to be deprived of all salt and for this cause that an unsensible astonishment is proper unto it As if the very sense of touching were onely in Salt For the Leprosie hath its own ulcers and according to the same Paracelsus there are as many Species of Ulcers as there are of Salts Therefore according to that his own Doctrine the Leprosie flowes from a Salt abounding Let us grant to Paracelsus yet without a diligent search of the Truth that the Excrement of the paunch in a Leprous person doth abound with small graines of Salt and that the urine of the same person doth no longer dissolve any thing of Sea-salt both whereof not withstanding are dreamed by Paracelsus Yet that would not prove that the flesh and bloud of a Leprous person do fail of their own salt And much lesse also that their flesh doth therefore fail of the sense of Touching For first This his opinion concerning the Leprosie utterly overthrowes his own Doctrine concerning the three first principles of Bodies And then even as there are of un-savoury and unsalt things manifest salts daily concocted in us from the Law of humane Digestion so although the excrements of Digestions were nothing but a meer salt yet should not the venal bloud therefore be deprived of its own salt Because it is that which borrowes not its salt and the
that very thing is the first Receiver and efficiently effecter of pain But a Sword stroak bruise Corrosives c. are indeed the occasional or effective Instrumentals but not the chief efficients of pain And then seeing pain is for the most part bred in an instant Also that which is stir'd up by external objects Therefore for pain there is no need of recourse to the Brain that by reflextion it should have need as it were of a Counsellour Wherefore the Schooles going back a little from the Brain had rather receive the sinew for the chief Organ which is to perceive of the objects of Sense as they are besprinkled either with a Beam of Light or with a material bedewing of Spirits for they have not yet resolved themselves in most things continually dismissed from the Brain And so that the Brain doth deny sense and motion to the inferiour parts unlesse it doth uncessantly inspire its own favour by the Spirits its Mediatours But herein also I find many perplexities First of all I spy out divers Touchings in man To wit almost particular Touchings to be in all particular members yea in the Bowels and other parts that are almost destitute of all fellowship with sinews Such as are the Teeth themselves the Root whereof although a small Nerve toucheth yet not the Teeth themselves more outwardly The which notwithstanding to have a feeling many against their wills will testifie So the Urine-pipes want a sinew and the Scull it self under the boring of the Chirurgians wimble resounds a wonderfull sense even into the Toes I have believed therefore that there could not be so great a latitude of one Touching distributed from one onely and common Fountain the Brain or from the Nerve of a simple Texture or Composure Therefore have I supposed that which I have before already proved That Sense doth chiefly reside in the sensitive Soul which is every where present and for that cause also immediately in the implanted Spirit of the parts And that thing I have the more boldly asserted because the Brain itself which is the shop of the in-flowing Spirit doth excell in so dull and irregular a Touching as that it hath been thought to be without feeling Therefore either that Maxime falls to the ground For the which things sake every thing is such that thing it self is more such or the Brain is not the primary seat and fountain of Touching In the next place all pain is made in the place and is felt as it were out of hand Therefore also Touching is made in the place and not after an afore-made signification to the Head And moreover in Nature or at leastwise in a round figure there is not right and left and so that neither can there be a side kept for phlegme in the Palsie by its fliding down except there are in the one onely Thorny Marrow especially in its Beginning two pipes throughout its length conteining the necessity of a side which is ridiculous even to have thought especially in the slender hollownesse of the fourth Bosom For truly Motion and Sense are in one and the same muscle which receiveth a simple and flender sinew Yet in fingers that are affected with benummednesse the feeling only is oftentimes suspended Motion being in the mean time safe and free Therefore either it must needs be that Sense and Motion do not depend on the same Nerve on the in-flowing Spirit and the common principle of these or it is of necessity that from the same one onely small Nerve Motion onely and not Sense or Sense onely and not Motion hath its dependance or that there are other forreign things hitherto unknown which take away or hurt Sense onely and not Motion but other things which stop Motion alone and some things which affect both Wherefore in a more thorow attention I have beheld that the astonishment of Touching unsensiblenesse want or defect in Motion were passions that sometimes arose from a primitive mean and that those passions were then also of necessity privative As in the straining of a turning joynt in strangling c. For I have known an honest Citizen to have been thrice hung up by Robbers for the wiping him of his money's sake and that he told me that at that very moment wherein the three-legged stool was withdrawn from his feet he had lost motion sense and every operation of his mind At leastwise the fourth little Bosome of his Brain was not then filled up nor the Thorny marrow pressed together which lived safe within the turning joynts and the Cord being cut the stopping phlegme was not again taken away out of that fourth Bosome that those Functions of his Soul and Body might return into their antient state A certain Astrologer being willing to try whether the death of hanging was a painfull death cast a Rope about his Neck and bad his Son a Youth that he should give heed when he moved his Thumb after the stool was withdrawn from under his feet so as presently to cut the Cord. The Lad therefore fixing his eyes on his Fathers fingers and not beholding motion in them and looking up vards he saw his Father black and blew and his Tongue thrust forth Therefore the Cord being cut the Astrologer falls on the ground and scarce recovered after a month Almost after the same manner doth drowning proceed Wherein assoon as at the first drawing the water is drawn through the mouth into the Lungs the use of the mental faculties is lost and by a repeated draught of water the former effects are confirmed Yet neither do they so quickly dye but that if they lay on their Face that the water may flow forth even those who appear to have been a good while dead do for the most part revive or live again The pipes of the Lungs therefore being filled up with a forreign Guest the vital Beam prepetually shining from the Midriffs into the Head is intercepted From whence consequently as it were a privative Apoplexy straightway ariseth Surely it is a wonder that the Functions of the mind should on both sides so quickly fail And so that also a continued importunity and dependance of necessity from the aspiring and vital favour of inferiour parts not yet acknowledged in the Schooles is conjectured wherefore I have promoted a Treatise concerning the Duum Virate I considered therefore if the Brain be the chief Fountain and Seat of the Immortall Soul understanding and memory at least as long as the Soul was in the Brain those faculties ought to remain untouched Seeing that for Cogitation there is neither need of the Leg nor of the Arm nor of Breathing Notwithstanding hanging doth as it were at one stroak totally take away the faculties of the mind For while the jugular Arteries did deny a community with the inferiour parts or the Lungs were filled up with water presently not onely the faculties do stumble but also such a stoppage did act by way of an universal Apoplexy and
Bowels after the manner of Stars For although the Stars do borrow their light from the Sun yet there is in every one of them his own peculiar property and strength of acting which is far most evident in the Moon about the ebbings flowings and overflowings of the Sea Be it therefore that the arteries of the Spleen do supply the place of the Sun yet the Spleen it self hath obtained a double and native dignity peculiar to it self although the Family-service of the Heart rejoyceth in the preparing of vital blood and spirit Therefore the Spleen is the seat of the Archeus the which seeing he is the immediate Instrument of the sensitive soul doth determine or limit or dispose of the vital actions of the soul residing in the stomach For the sensitive soul doth scarce meditate of any thing without the help of the Archeus because it rejoyceth not being abstracted as doth the minde the which in its ebbing or going back by an extasie doth sometimes and without the props of the Archeus and corporal Air intellectually contemplate of many and great things Also in exorbitances of the Archeus an aversion confusion exorbitancy and indignation is administred And the sensitive soul it self being as it were the husk of the minde doth alwayes will it nill it make use of the Archeus Hence indeed all foolish madnesses some whereof onely have been made known are called praecordial or Midriffe ones and are ascribed to the place about the short Ribs the which notwithstanding do spring from the same seat and the same fountain of the soul as it were by the hurting of one onely point Also Remedies do scarce materially go without the hedges or bounds of the stomach And therefore they are rare which are brought thorow unto the spleen which thing in the difficulties of a Quartane Ague is plain enough to be seen For the immortal minde is read to be inspired into Adam by omnipotency and that without the Wedlock of the sensitive soul And that breath of life he calls a substance And therefore that is not found to be breathed into bruit Beasts Therefore the minde was first of all immediately tied to the Archeus as to its own Organ or Instrument the which therefore it could at its pleasure daily substitute a-new out of the meats being sufficiently and alwayes and perpetually alike strong And from thence to awaken the immortal life worthy of or meet for it self For truly the immortal minde being every where present did perform all the offices of life immediately by the Archeus and the which therefore doth borrow his own liveliness from the minde who also is therefore after some sort superiour to mortal things and seemed to be the foster-Child of a more excellent Monarchy than of a sublunary one These things were so before the fall of Adam But seeing that in the same day of their transgression they were made guilty of death a soul subject to death came unto them the Vicaresse and Companion of the minde To wit unto whom the minde it self straightway transferred the dispositions of the government of the Body For at first there was an immediate Wed-lock of the immortal minde with the Archeus Presently after the fall and the stirring up of the sensitive soul the minde withdrew it â—â—lf like a Kernel into the center of the sensitive soul whereto it was tied by the bond of life The minde is not nourished by foods it could chuse meats for its own Archeus and prepare them for him who now is constrained with an unwearied study to watch for his own support of nourishment And that by degrees he lesse and lesse fitly prepares and applies to himself by reason of the defective duration and power of the sensitive soul Thus therefore I ought to speak concerning the seat of the minde of the material occasion of mortality and the necessities of Diseases and distemper For truly what things are here required in the Treatise of the entrance of death into humane nature is demonstrated at large with an explication of that Text From the North shall evill be stretched out over all the Inhabitants of the Earth Therefore for a Summary The central place of the Soul is the Orifice or upper mouth of the stomach no otherwise than as the Root of Vegetables is the vital place of the same The minde sitteth in the sensitive soul whereto it was consequently bound after the fall But the Brain is the executive member of the canceipts of the soul as it sits chief over the sinews and muscles in respect of motion but in respect of sense or feeling it possesseth in it self the faculties of memory will and Imagination Therefore the stomach failing or being defective there are palenesses tremblings drith's Consumptions of the flesh and strength wringings of the Belly or Guts the Asthma or stoppage of breathing Jaundises Palsies Convulsions giddinesses of the Head Apoplexies c. For the most famous Physitians do wonder that oft-times extream defects are overcome not otherwise than by remedies pertaining to the stomach and that the evil of the stomach doth bring forth Diseases far distant from it self And the more modern Physitians are amazed that vulnerary potions should succesfully cure wounds of the joynts And that according to Paracelsus the Cancer Wolf the eating inflamed Ulcer are cured by a Drink Therefore the errour of those that cure the more outward parts that are ill-affected as if they were fundamental ones and they who do translate all healing about the head it being hurt by the lower parts proceedeth from hence by reason of the ignorance of the seat of the Soul life and government CHAP. XXXVIII From the Seat of the Soul unto Diseases 1. A greater sense is proved to be in the mouth of the Stomach than in the eye or fingers 2. The Schools do every where being unconstrained consent to the Paradox concerning the seat of the Soul although they do openly dissent therefrom 3. The wayling of those that are exorbitant through much leachery 4. The life of the stomach is chief over the other digestions 5. The Ferment that is a friend to the stomach is afterwards an enemy to all the particular shops of digestions 6. Divers Diseases are stirred up by the Ferment of the stomach being transplanted 7. The snare of Gatarrhs 8. The foundation of Diseases 9. The joynt-sickness proves that thing 10. Very many Diseases do flow centrally from the stomach which are feared and healed by the Head 11. Of what sort the co-mixture of the Character of some Diseases may be 12. How Medicines applied to or bound about the Head do operate 13. It is proved that the seat of the Soul is not in the heart it self 14. Remarkable things about the Character of Diseases 15. Why the effects of fear do vary their own effects 16. The same thing is considered for a poysonous occasional cause 17. They are appropriated to the vital light 18. An objection 19. The intent of the Author 20.
right side as also the Western in the left and he at length ascribes to every wind their proper Remedies involved under Hieroglyphicks as yet to him unknown Alas with how sorrowful a pledge are all these things and by how sporting a means hath that man invaded the principality of healing to wit that we are all little Worlds for at how dear a rate doth he sell us this Idea or Image of the Macrocosme and by what a scanty argument doth he found his dreams when as in very deed there are no winds nor matter of winds in us which we do not breath in and breath out otherwise that neither is there a flatulent or windy Gas in us unless in one way house and passage To wit from the stomack through the bowels even into the fundament Indeed Paracelsus had known these things in part in the next place that of winds in the Womb Pleura Head and Muscles there were old Wives fables Nevertheless he as yet weaved greater that he might compose these ridiculous hinges of winds the which by a stronger right he had transferred into the Wombe then into the bowels The which with great grief doth writh it self sometimes on the left side of the bottom of the belly sometimes on the right side and besiegeth even the Navil or inclines it self behind unto the back and loynes But he had remained doubtful where he had found a fifth wind in the head-long Wombe and where a sixth while the Womb is carried straight upwards and therefore although he at large declameth concerning the Star or Astrum of the Wombe in a particular Book yet he sleeping hath neglected the Cardinal winds of the World in the exorbitances of the Wombe Although he also doth seriously declare that the Womb is a World but moreover less than the Microcosme But oh Paracelsus by supposing some Els of a bowel stretched out by wind and that wind shut up on both sides for if it be not shut up it shall neither cause pain nor stretch out but shall be evacuated by its own emunctory of its own accord and so that it doth neither breath nor is carried side-wayes after the manner of winds My question is concerning the Name Essence Original and Remedy of that wind And then when the Ileon is extended perhaps for 40 turns as well from the back forwards as with a side passage on both sides with what and what order of twisting shall the hinges of the four winds have their Scituation Name and property of Name For so in every winding circle there should be now fourty Southern winds and as many Northern ones c. For if in the twentieth or in every particular twisting of the intestine thou oughtest to have added a reason why not in the tenth or twelfth if thou desiredst credit to be given to thee dreaming of these things But surely thou hast not been a faithful Aeolus of those winds Because thou marking the colick to have oft-times afforded the contracted muscles of the hands Convulsions I say and Palseys hast not blushed to say that winds are carried from the bowels through all the muscles and tendons And thou hast affirmed that with so much the more liberty because thou findest the Schools prone unto every service of vapours and winds perhaps for all Diseases For when through the dictating testimony of truth within they found not rest for themselves in Elements Complexions and Humours they being confused sought out a mean whereby they might find the cause of Diseases by vapours and winds For perhaps when humours had deceived them they wished that they might not be reproved by an invisible position of winds Indeed it was an invention of the Impostor Satan who seeing he endeavours to be Gods Ape by the belief of invisible things pretends that the understanding of the credulous or those rash of belief is due unto himself And that they do suffice for all Diseases so the belly do rustle its rumblings in the ears And therefore I ought also by all means to have treated of flatus's or windinesses Surely I pity on both sides so great unconstancy of Paracelsus and ignorance of those that believe him whereby he excludes and cuts off from himself his pretended title of the Monarch of Secrets For he knew not in this place that such is the property of any poyson being administred even under the friendly shew of purging Medicines that they do sorely trouble or shake the Archeus and stir up a Blas thereof according to the Aphorism A Cramp or Convulsion after Hellebour is mortal And that that colick which besides the wonted wringings of the bowels proceeding from a sharpness doth moreover contain an infection of poyson is also the Author of the Convulsion Although wind in the mean time be not carried out of the gut Ileon So a man dying with a total extinguishment of his strength leaves his dead carcase on both sides extended with a general Tetanus but whenas he is snatched away by a violent Death his dead carcase is flaggy Whence I have learned that there is a certain life feeling and motion or Blas in the flesh besides a voluntary one To wit that life apprehending poysons and death together with an extinguishment doth extend the tendons on both sides Whence it is false that the heart is the last which dieth For the life of the Muscles doth as yet remain surviving which is most powerful in Insects so also the head being plucked off flies do as yet flie away And in a woman long dead her Wombe hath oft-times chased out her young Therefore every Convulsion of the Muscles whether from the colick or by taking a laxative poyson or any other thing is not from a voluntary motion but from a natural act of feeling and moving of the Muscles but not that the flatus which extends the bowels doth also efficiently extend the Muscles Even as in the Book of the Disease of the Stone in the Treatise of Sense and Sensation I have abundantly confirmed It is therefore for a sound decree This is carminative that drives away winds but that scatters windy blasts As if by enchanting verses winds to be renounced by Physitians should depart For if the conduit and passage of utterance do lay open wind never wants a forreign aid as neither a strange driver that it may go forth Yea which is more wringings of the guts do not alwayes cease although there be a free egress for flatus's Otherwise if the way be without an impediment the windy blast whether the Physitian will or no shall find it for truly there is but one only passage of the bowels and that continual unto them But such driving Medicines ought to have some mean even as a Pestil thrusts forward the contained clysters But that mean that it may be fit for the expelling of a flatus it ought suitably to answer the conduit of the bowels as well in the slender as in the grosser ones and moreover to have a
106. A paradox is prooved against the Schooles 107. Sensible agents act on the sense only occasionally whether they are medicines or not fire excepted 108. An application of virtues by what meanes it may be made 109. Sensation consists in the vitall judgment and so also in that of the Soul 110. Some consequences for the demonstrations of things before passed 111. From whence the faculties of medicines have been estranged in the Schooles 112. How differently the fire can act 113. The unconsiderate rashnesse of the Schooles 114. Some sequels drawn from the foregoing particulars 115. The differences of paines 116. A convulsion is the companion of paine 117. The paine of the disease of the stone 118. The blockish opinion of the Schooles concerning the convulsion or Cramp 119. It s falshood is manifested 120. Errours meeting us 121. Some negligencies of Galen 122. Galen looseth the name of a Physitian from the censure of his own mouth 123. Galen hath taught only childish devises 124. Arguments on the contrary 125. The errour of the Schooles concerning the Convulsion is concluded 126. Ridiculous similitudes made use of by the Schooles 127. Some remarkable things 128. After what manner the Convulsion is made 129. A twofold motion of the muscles is proved 130. The Convulsion is not properly an affect of the head 131. Example of parts convulsed 132. A sight of a colicall contraction in a child 133. An Artery from whence it waxeth hard 134. Divers contractures 135. That the causes of the Cramp have layen hid 136. The neglects of the Schooles 137. The degrees of paines THe pain of the Stone in the kidneys being one of the chief and most troublesome of paines is very great and cruel For the Schooles are at rest in accusing the cause of so great a pain to be a fretting or grating made by the Sand or Stone But I have perswaded my self that there was nothing at all of satisfaction from that answer And therefore I have made a further search Because some one very small Stone sliding out of the kidney doth at the first turnes cause more cruel pain than any the more big one afterwards the which notwithstanding is undoubtedly more than by its freting to wrest or wring to excoriate or pluck of the skin of and extend the urine-pipe For truly in persons grown to ripe years the spermatick parts of the first constitution do no longer dayly grow and so neither is their Ureter enlarged afterwards by the descending of the stones In the next place the slender sand hath been oftentimes very troublesome through its paine and hath cast down the howling man on his bed before it proceeded out of the kidney and the which therefore was never as yet injurious by its rubbing on it or grating of it neither also is it sufficient to have spoken of fretting or grating for the proper and total cause of so bitter a paine For the Ureter throughout its whole passage hath not the commerce of a sinew implanted in it the which therefore ought even to want sense or feeling and by consequence also pain For truly the Schooles define pain to be a sorrowfull sensation made by a hurtfull thing rushing on the part If therefore the slender and un-savoury sand be voide of all tartnesse and fretting or grating or the smal clot is not guiltlesse because neither without pain certainly to have toucht upon the causes and race of sense and pain together wit hs it circumstances shall not be disagreeable to the treatise of the disease of the Stone First therefore and in the entrance of sense the Touching of pain comes to be considered For therefore the Schooles teach that the Braine is the first and principal organ of all the senses and of all motions and by consequence also of pain and unsensibility To wit the which should discerne the objects of the senses by the animal spirits being on every side dismissed from it self into all the propagations or Sprouts of the sinewes and therefore as into the patrons of all sensations so also as into the interposing messengers and discerners thereof They presume to themselves that they have spoken some great matter in this thing I will speak more distinctly And moreover I shall say nothing or at least wise I will declare a matter which is of no worth For indeed the Schooles confesse that the Braine doth in it self feel nothing or scarce any thing and that therein it is like the first universal Mover which the moderns alio Catholiques do with Aristotle command that he ought to be unmoveable if he ought to move all other things as if the unutterable first mover cannot move himself or that he ought to be unmoved and wholly unmoveable yea that he acts and perfecteth by his own touch of local motion all things in a moment who in very deed moveth not any thing but by an absolute and most abstracted beck of Omnipotency and let this be an absurdity of the Schooles by good men accounted for blasphemy by a Parenthesis here noted by the way Notwithstanding the Brain is not the primary or adequate Organ of sense and motion seeing that in it self it is unmoved and deprived of sense For the Schooles beholding that a turning joynt of the back being displaced for that very cause whatsoever was subjected to the Nerves and Sinewes beneath that turning joynt was also without sense and motion therefore they straightway determined the Brain it self and the marrow of the Thorne of the Back the Vicaresse hereof to be the adequate or fuitable Organ or Instrument of sense and motion But other Writers being willing to give a nearer attention since they acknowledged and confessed the substance of the Brain to be deprived of touching nor to be voluntarily moved but that the twofold membrane or filme endowed with the name of Menynx was of a most acute touching although unmoved They decreed that every sinew how slender soever was over-covered with such a double membrane and did borrow it from both the Menynx's of the Brain that this very membrane of the sinewes was to wit consequently formed under the one onely endeavour of Formation and labour of the seed of Fabrication Even so that also these would have it That every Nerve should draw its own feeling from the little filme that covered it which did not any way answer from its substance unto the marrowie substance of the Brain Perhaps they took notice that in the stomach and womb so great and so excellent vertue were inmates in the naked membranes thereof and therefore that neither was it a wonder that something very like unto those had happened unto the filmes of the Brain from a prerogative of the same Right I have altogether proceeded something otherwise for the searching out of sense and pain and the Organ objects and causes of motion and feeling I considered first that while a wound is as yet fresh it scarce paineth but anon while the lips of the Wound do
which prostrate the most potent or chief Dignities of the mind yet the Sense and Motion being unhurt But after that the understanding returns indeed as well Sense as Motion are abolished Some things also being outwardly anoynted on the Body do take away the feeling so as that there is a liberty for the Chyrurgion in cutting and the Oyntments being afterwards withdrawn the expelled feeling returneth From hence indeed I have believed that the Apoplexy drowsie Evils Falling-sicknesse and likewise stranglings of the Womb and any Swoonings are Diseases arising from a secondary passion and action of Government but not from a corporall confluence of humouts and vapours bred in the bottles of the Brain Truly the Womb never ascends above the Diaphragma but it causeth Apoplectical Affects There is not therefore a material Touching of the Womb and Head For I have known a Perfume whereby a Woman suddenly falls down as Apoplectical together with the Palsie of her side and she remaines such unlesse she be restored by the Fume of a Horse-fig sent thorow by a Funnel to the Womb. For I have seen also the Circle of the neck in a Woman to have suddenly ascended above the height of her Chin the which is subject neither to humours nor vapours For truly there is an aspect of the Womb as it were of its own Basilisk whereby the parts by the afflux of the Latex but what that Latex is shall be taught elsewhere do swell even as is otherwise proper to many poysons Even so as the waters do ascend and swell at both stations of the Moon from the aspect of that Star alone I will decipher my own self in this respect While I was in the 65 Year of my age and was greatly occupied about the consideration of the Apoplexy I discerned To wit that a positive one which should be made by a freezing poyson had it self in such a manner as that it could be known from another which afflicts by the stopping of a sinew Even so that he who sitting with his Leg Retorted or writhen back loseth feeling in that Leg by reason of a pressing together of the sinew and while as Sense is restored unto it that Lancings or prickings are felt from the vital or animal Spirit which is Salt as I have shewn in the Book of long Life but from an astonishment which proceeds from a freezing poyson if the feeling shall return no pain of lancing or pricking offers it self For I contemplated in my study under the cold of the Calends of the 11th Month called January and an earthen Pan laden with a few live Coals stood aloof off whereby the most chilly cold season of the Winter might at least be a little mitigated One of my Daughters seasonably coming to the place sented the stink of the smoak and presently withdrew the Pan But I forthwith perceived a fainting to be sorely threatned about the Orifice of my stomach I arising therefore and going forth in one instant I fell with a straight body on a stony ground therefore as well by reason of the swooning as of the stroak of the hinder part of my head I was brought away for a dead carcase I returned indeed after a quarter of an houre unto the signes of life but together with a swelling of the hinder part of my head I felt the seames or futures of my scul notably to paine me and that more and more My tast also and smelling to have been wholly taken away and my eares continually to tingle Moreover at every of my conceptions my head presently whirled round with a giddinesse even my eyes being shut straightway after all my sinewes even unto the calfes of my legs ached so as that one only sneezing cruelly launced the whole body indeed an appetite of eating returned but a whirling round excercised me for some months But I learned first that in the evening before supper the giddinesse of my head increased to wit about the bound of digestion 2. That my judgment remayning the giddinesse notwithstanding was prevalent 3. That from any kind of pot-herbs and unsalted fishes the whirling did the more cruelly assault me 4. I noted the Gem Turcois to have remayned entire or neutral with me having fallen nor to have preserved me from the peril of falling And that the Turcois doth not help any but those whom a sudden fear in falling surpriseth The which happens not in those wherein a swooning precedes and frameth the fall 5. That my giddinesse was from meates subject to corruption 6. And I seriously noted that the Apoplexy Vertigo c. do depend on the midriffe although from the shaking of the stroake my head alone seemed to be affected and the vertigo did sensibly whirle about in my head Yet seeing the giddinesse had respect unto meates and a plenty of meates I remarkeably perceived that presently after the aforsaid swooning a guest besides nature remayned about the stomach being the occasional cause of the aforesaid giddinesse or vertigo and that thing I the more strongly confirmed because as oft as I had in times past sayled over the sea I indeed at the beginning of stormes grew nauseous but I never vomited or desisted from eating but after that I wandred about on Land I always perceived an unconstant giddinesse night and day resembling the motion of sayling upwards and downwards Untill that I was alwayes at length freed by a vomite of white Vitriol For at least wise in sayling there was no offence brought unto my head yet as if I had been drunk I threatned a fall with a continuall giddinesse the operation of my judgment notwithstanding remayning constant and unhurt But I was always freed from that giddinesse by one onely vomite But now in the aforesaid fall the stroake indeed produced a tumour in the hinder part of my head and in the seames of my scull bewraying its effects in the organs of the senses and nerves But all these did least of all cause a wheeling about of my head the which I observed to be chiefely stirred up or exasperated from the choice of meates Most especially because that whirling was restrained according to its custome by one only vomite From whence I experienced in my self that the giddinesse of my head although my head was hurt was stirred up and nourished by the stomach and so from the Duumvirate But that the swooning it self gave a cause of the stroak and also left a sealing mark in a forreigne guest there detained Again that that whirling was not from a vapour lifted upwards from beneath but from the corporeal occasion of a sealed excrement as oft as something offered it self which was the lesse pleasing unto those inferiour shops the force and impressive Idea of the same redounded into the braine From thence therefore I discerned that be-drunkening things being derived from the stomach into the arteries and co-mixed with vital spirit did confound the family-administration of the spirit in the little cells of the Braine and
also disturb the imaginative power because they actually proceeded through the arteries upwards as forreigners and strangers to wit by be-giddyng things whereby indeed whirlines only how cruel ones soever were presented the understanding remayning fafe For the occasional causes also of these whirlings do remaine in the places about the short ribs from whence they by the power of government vitiate the Brain it self but not the abstracted faculties of the mind which are immediatly sealed in the spirits Even so as the Elf's hoofe being bound to the finger restraines the same rigour of the Duumvirate in those that have the falling sicknesse I also well weighed as it were by an Optical inspection after what manner the first conceptions might be formed the midriffs and from thence being sent unto the head polished And at length after what sort these midriffs might be diversly tossed in dotages and Hypochondriacal madnesses without any running round of the head And how in drunken persons a whirling might accompany their foolish madnesse But elsewhere after what sort a whirling 〈…〉 of the head might induce no stumbling of the minde Even as otherwise how the memory might stumble the man remayning safe and sound Truly as I seriously and with much leisure weighed these things with my self I found that qualities do follow their own Idea's and by course act their own tragedies in the excrement themselves to wit which diverse properties of qualities I then at first cleerly apprehended to be as it were seminal endowments and true formal Idea's whereby indeed the strength of the sensitive soul for why they are companions of the same formal order was vitiated and variously subdued and yielded to the importunities of active Idea's Alasse for grief then the bottome of the soul so called by Taulerus manifested it self unto me which was nothing else but the immortal minde it self to wit in what great utter darknesses it might be involved as it were in coates of skin as it was fast tied to and entertained in the Inne of the very sensitive soul while the terme of life endures And so from hence I clearly knew him whom I have also therefore concerning Long Life by an unheard word explained to the honour of God the contempt of Satan and the Magnificence or great Atchievement of the whole Perigrination of man I have also taught concerning Long Life that the Head is the fountain of the growth of the parts placed under it which thing Crump-backed persons do also confirm and so that from the head the State and Duration of Growth is limited That bounds also are described by the hairs and therefore that heads void of care do scarce wax gray I profess therefore with the Schools That a vital Light is indeed diffused from the Brain as from a fountain and dispersed through the sinews and that that Light being absent the faculties that are silent in their proper Inns are also straightway silent through a priâ—ative occasion For although Sense and Motion do after some sort depend as well perceptively as executively on the implanted spirit of the parts yet because all particular parts are vitally nourished by a besprinkled light of the Brain The Thred also or Beam of this Light being intercepted Sense and Motion likewise are as soon as may be intercepted But these things do shew only a privative Apoplexie not indeed so truly a Disease as an accidental one even as I have shewn above in the Strayning of the Turning-Joyuts But not that therefore the fountainons cause of the Senses and Motions in the spirit dieth with that privation although the functions thereof be suspended while that Light from above is suspended For a Fly doth sometimes frequently flie when his head is taken off Also the Head of a man being cut off his joynts do oftentimes for a good while leap a little and are contracted and do as yet afford the signes of an in-bred motion But of a positive and diseasie Apoplexie there is a far different cause and property For now and then a depriving of Sense and Astonishment straightway lights into the palm of the hand or into the one only finger the motion thereof notwithstanding remaining safe Doth therefore Phlegm a forreigner to that finger fall into the middle or pith of the sinew To wit by a pipe wherewith the small Nerve is throughout bored thorow and conspirable with the Brain Or perhaps doth an unwonted Vapour of Phlegm run down thither and the which otherwise was wont or ought to climb upwards the nature of Vapours so determining and by a vital violent force obeying But at leastwise one only Nerve extended into the Tendon of the Palm bestowes Sense and Motion on the four fingers alike Why therefore is the Feeling alone stupified in one finger only Again What Vapour being ever lifted up even from the most tough snivel was grosser or not equal to that which ascends from the water Let as many as have been Distillers in the Universe answer Why therefore shall a gross Vapour of Phlegm the which I have sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere to be a non-being be required for an astonishment and not that of simple water or of the blood But if indeed a Vapour of the latex or blood shall effect that thing then also there shall be a necessary ordinary and continual general stupefaction of all parts without intermission And then if some forreign or exerementous humour or vapour be the ocasional cause of such an astonishment to wit the privative and stoppifying one of a nerve surely it is sent oâ— runs down thither of its own accord If it be sent yet at least not from the Brain or the marrow its Vicaress For so it should not straightway affect as neither at leastwise strike at one only finger and the utmost part of the finger which was but presently before healthy Neither is that Vapour sent from the spirit the Family-administrater of Life because it is that which should more willingly and readily go forth as being banished by transpiration Therefore that thing manifestly contradicteth providence and a natural care of diligence which alwayes dispenseth all things foâ— the best end Because nature as too injurious to her self should dash against the sinewes those things which she according to her wonted manner had more easily better and more nearly commanded away unto the natural and ordinary emunctory of the skin And so that vaporal Fable of the Schools which is to be scourged contains a manifold impossibility For the Pipe of the Sinews ends into the thorny marrow with a straight thred and a continued passage neither hath it any transverse trunks through which it should transmit that phlegmatish vapour sidewayes for otherwise there would be made a total loss of the spirits before they could come down unto the Muscle the Executer of Motion so far is it that it should suck the same vapour that way That Humour or Vapour therefore cannot be transmitted or descend unto one only finger and much
in good health a sudden swooning oft-times rusheth on one from the lower parts and as well Sense as Motion failes in one onely instant If that be made by Fumes Sense ought first to fail and afterwards motion by degrees Because the foremost Bosomes of the Brain are nearer to the mouth of the stomach than that last very slender one is And that thing should happen altogether most slowly if the Apoplexy were from a stoppage Again In most sharp gripings or wringings of the Bowels the Joynts are drawn together with an integrity of the Functions of the Mind yea and without a pain in the Head the which presently after in the Palsie are for the most part at rest Doth therefore the pain of the Belly stop up the Beginning of the Thorny marrow without an Apoplexy To wit so as that often-times both the hands and feet are resolved and deprived of motion Is now therefore the fourth bosome of the Brain stopped on both sides Why are the Joynts onely deprived of Motion and Sense not likewise the intermediating Organs begging their own Sense and Motion from the same Journey mean and middle space For what affinity is there of a Bowel with that last bosome of the Cerebellum Or what agreement of this bosome with the utmost Joynts To wit that these should pay the punishment deserved from elsewhere For it is not yet sufficiently manifest seeing Sense and Motion are made in one onely Nerve yet how in most either of the two may be hurt the other being safe Wherefore I as the first ought to clear up this Question by Positions 1. The Brain doth not feel or perceive by it self scarce in it self But it is covered with two membranes of a most sharp sense so that there is every where a very sharp sense and a majesty of great Authority in the stomach womb Coats of the Brain Intestines To wit in naked membranes c. 2. The Correlative thereof is the Animal Spirit as long as it is formed within the bosomes of the Brain or wanders it feeleth not neither is the Brain made a partaker of Sense thereby 3. That Spirit receives not Sense from the Brain seeing the Brain it self wants sense And by Consequence neither doth the spirit receive the last power of its perfection and Sensation in the bosomes of the Brain 4. The Thorny Marrow in its inward kernel is the continued substance of the Brain and is therefore cloathed with a membrane con-tinual with the Menynx's or Coats thereof 5. Every sinew is therefore marrowie within but without it is covered with its own little membrane 6. The Thorny Marrow is believed to be passable through its middle as long as we live whereby the motive Spirit is dispensed and equally extended throughout the length of that Marrow and the Nerves For that its own vital light beaming forth brings down the command of the Will or its beck unto the Muscles the executive Organ of that motion which the Soul voluntarily proposeth to it self 7. The Command of the Soul is instantous not indeed that the Spirits as being ennobled with the Characters of a Command do run down suppose thou in one that playes on the Harp at all particular moments of motions For although motions may happen to the administring Spirits yet the obediences of these should be too slow Wherefore the command or beck of the Soul is brought down in an instant onely by a beam of Light Even so as the Objects of sight are even at a far distance perceived in a moment 8. Seeing there is no Sense or at leastwise a dull one unto the Brain but a most acute one unto the Coates thereof therefore the light of Sense defluxeth not through the marrow and central substance of a sinew and its Trunk but the sensitive Soul beams forth Sense and is especially communicated from the Coates of the Brain through the membranes the coverings of the sinews unto the parts co-touching with and being the annexed Clients of the Nerve 9. Therefore the light which beames forth unto the Guardians of Sense and Motion is formed in a double substance and by a double beck sensitively From hence it comes to pass that Sense is hurt Motion being safe or on the contrary by reason of a diversity of participated light brought down through divers Organs Wherefore the most High is never sufficiently to be praised who hath placed so Noble Faculties in the Membranes of the Brain Stomach and Womb conteining the Life Soul and the whole Government of man in them For if there be a fundamental verity of Palmestry and Physiognomy there are Lines as well in the forehead as in the hand which do sometimes portend an Apoplexy to come But such a Signate is from the thing signifying which naturally constitutes us But the Archeus of the Seed cannot fore-know those effects especially those which are to arise from a contingent Chance to wit if anger an inordinate life and the too much use of Tobacco shall afford the Beginnings of an Apoplexy Therefore at least it must needs be that the Beginnings of an Apoplexy are not from a privative cause if they are concealed in the Seminal Beginnings themselves and are at sometime to break forth at the time of their own maturity which is to say that the Apoplexy doth actually lay hid in the Archeus or Seed after the manner of Hereditary Diseases and so also that it thus makes an assault through whole Families At leastwise be it known that an Apoplexy is not a stopping up of the little Bosome made by phlegme as neither a privative effect but that it consists of true and Seminal Beginnings But the stopping phlegme if there were any in man or the stoppage depending thereupon doth not fore-exist in the Seed and much lesse should it be fit to delineate in the Young so late monstrous effects And so they most remotely exclude phlegme sliding into the fourth Bosome of the Brain And by Consequence also the Universities who have been hitherto ignorant of the Disease and Remedy thereof In the next place Neither is it to be understood by what meanes or middle distance Nature could so detain the phlegme a disobedient and not vital excrement on the one side onely of that small and most narrow Bosome that it should never issue unto the opposite side through its own heap and fluidnesse of moisture Yea when the Palsie is in the right side the laying down is then alwayes on the left side therefore it should be impossible but that that phlegme should soon fall down into the left side and extinguish the sick party himself or at least beget an Ambulatory or shaking Palsie Why at length should that little bosome expell that phlegme alwayes unto the right or left side but never forwards or backwards Especially because in Nature there is not right or left but all things in respect of the whole Body are round whence it is manifest that in the very Organs to wit in
to be from the errour of a convulsive Retraction and not rather from that of both the supposed causes To wit as well through a stoppage of the netve from Phlegm filling it as they say as by a pressing together of the dryed sinew and as if so great a sudden drying up thereof were credible or possible to be in a live body Yea after what manner doth a nerve being now once withered suppose thou by too much insolency as they say of laxative Hellebour presently again admit of a restauration of its own radical moisture being dryed up Why hath it been necessary to feign and admit of a filling or emptying of a sinew if a poysonous quality can afford the Convulsion without either of them The received opinion therefore of the Schooles concerning the causes of the Convulsion or Cramp registred to be from the emptinesse and fulnesse of the sinewes is ridiculous For although they with Galen acknowledge also a third Cause which is that of a malignant quality Neverthelesse they stick as convicted in the two former Causes For they err in the Matter Object Efficient and manner of making That is in the whole As if a small Nerve being extended unto a Muscle which oft-times scarce equalizeth the grossenesse of a threefold thred being moistened more than is meet and dryeâ— than is fit to be should be made by so much shorter than it self by how much a muscle drawes the members together perhaps to to the length of a span Yea as though as well the be dashing of an hostile Humour as the emptying of a Nerve should cause the paines of a Convulsion They bring hither the ridiculous Example of dryed Clay when as in live Bodies drynesses are impossible and they also afford impossible Restaurations While as notwithstanding those Cramps do oft-times cease of their own accord The Schooles have thought that those feigned Moistnesses and Drynesses of a little sinew which could scarce effect the latitude of a straw do contract the Muscle even into the Convulsion of a foot-length Neither likewise is that Example of value That the string of a Lute being wet with the Rain of Heaven leaps assunder as broken in regard that it is cut short by the imbibed Liquor For first of all it might have been extended longer by twofold than the feigned extension thereof in its breadth had shortened the same The Schooles do not take notice that a moist membrane is brickle as also a dry one and therefore also that Lute-strings are kept fat in oyl lest they should become wet or wax dry Away with their examples which have no place in a live body For in a living body the sinews cannot be so dryed that their witheredness can cause any abbreviation 2. They being once dryed can never afterwards receive a moistening any more than drie old age it self 3. They deny a Convulsion arisen from a laxatâ—ve medicine to be made by a poyson For if they should acknowledge a poyson to be in a solutive medicine they should cut off their own purse A Convulsion therefore arising from a solutive Medicine as from only an emptying but not from a poysonous Medicine should be indeed from an emptiness or dryness of the sinews But a Convulsion or Cramp arisen from a loosening Medicine is oft-times restored Therefore it is not bred from a dryness of the sinews 4. Every lean old person should be drawn back by a perpetual and universal Convulsion 5. Seeing a sinew is not the executive member of motion therefore the shortening of at sinew proves not a Convulsion of the joynts as though an arm or leg ought to follow upon the cutting short of a sinew 6. Seeing that a nerve being moistened so that it were made by so much the shorter by how much through a forreign humour being imbibed it should be extended on its breadth such a humour should be plainly contrary to nature it should effect a Palsey rather then a Convulsion But a Palsey is Diametrically opposite to a Convulsion it self as well in Sense as in Motion 7. How could a stroak of the Scull presently at one moment dry up the sinews of one side but by moistening the other sinews opposite unto them forthwith enlarge them on their breadth that they may cause the Convulsion and Palsey at once And seeing as well Emptying as Filling are feigned for the cause of the Convulsion the stroak of the Scul ought to produce the Cramp on both sides 8. It is no wonder therefore that so unsuccesful remedies have been applied to the Convulsion if the Universities are hitherto ignorant of all the Requisites of Diseases For they ought to have known that every Convulsion is a vital Blas of the Muscles stirred up from the in bred Archeus The occasion whereof is a certain Malignant matter rushing on the Archeus as laying in wait for the life of the Muscles What if Hippocrates hath referred the cause of a Convulsion unto emptiness and fulness he hath had respect unto the occasions of the foregoing life To wit that there was a frequent Convulsion to riotous persons and likewise through much emptying of the Veins And Galen not apprehending the mind of the old man hath waxed lean at the humoural filling and emptying of the sinews by a succeeding and that his own device Such old wives fictions therefore which have been perswaded by the Schools unto credulous youth being despised I say that there is in the Muscles a twofold motion to wit one as it is the Organ of a voluntary motion and another as being proper to it self whereby although it draw back it self towards its head yet it nothing hinders but that the spirit implanted in those motive parts doth retract or draw back and move those parts even as was already said before concerning the â—od For neither is it repugnant to nature for the parts to leap a little by a local motion of their own the soul being absent to wit for the parts which are moveable by another Commander to be furiously contracted through a sorrowful sensation seeing that another conspicuous motion is singularly wanting to the Muscles whereby it may denote the hurt brought on them besides that whereby it executes the voluntary motion of the Soul And moreover it is altogether natural to all the members and proper to the common endeavour of the parts for those to be drawn together by reason of the sorrowfull sense of an injury brought on them which place the Schooles have left untouched Wherefore I have accounted it an erroneous thing to believe with the Schooles That the Convulsion is an affection of the Head For now they depart herein from their own Positions whereby they suppose the Cramp to be from filling or emptying or from a poysonous quality of the Nerves unlesse they had rather the Case being now altered that the Convulsion should arise from the filling or emptying of the Head But the Cramp is an accident of the sensitive Spirit Which thing first
blood slides indeed within the stems or threds of the Muscles and is made flesh but it doth not easily transcend unto the Bowels that are to be nourished and to the threds or fibers of the flesh For an infirm man being extenuated by a long disease a recovering even after youth doth easily retake the former state of his flesh but he which is waxen lean by the vice of a certain Bowel doth not therefore likewise rise gaain unto his former state And this is the difficulty of healing the Consumption and of healing the Ulcers of the Bowels whereas in the mean time external Ulcers being far worse are healed by Medicines taken in by way of the mouth although they are at a farther distance from the mouth than internal Ulcers Because the Bowels and inward Membranes are nourished by Arterial blood more than by Venal blood But life hath received its bound from God Therefore also whatsoever things are nourished by vital bloud they stop their increase at a certain number of dayes Whereas the while the flesh of the Muscles which is nourished onely with venal bloud and the fibers of the Mufcles which are nourished with Arterial blood doth uncessantly increase as oft as it faileth and groweth up to a hugeness to the destruction of some So also broken bones are made sound by a bonie callous matter at any age But seeing the Bowels do cease to increase all the spermatick fibers also and those of the first constitution do cease from growing For which of you shall adde a Cubit unto his stature For I have observed that women with child being long afficted with notable grief have brought forth the less Young First of all therefore I do not admit of a Livery spirit to be in the venal bloud And then neither do I distinguish the Animal spirit from the vital For truly in one onely ship one only Pilot stands at the Stern neither do more suffer themselves to be together without confusion Neither do I admit of a new Digestion for animal spirits in the bosom of the brain Like as also that the spirit doth not differ in the species from it self in all the particular Organs of the Senses and Executers of Motions Although the senses dirfer among themselves in the Species as also from motion So I think it to be a confused argument that deviseth many Archeüsses to be in a man For although the Gas shall draw a singular disposition from the instrument yet this doth not prove a specifical diversity Therefore in the Fourth and fifth Digestions there are no excrements nor unlike things or parts nor do they proceed from them And therefore it is false That in every nourishment there is an excrement For the arterial bloud and spirit do agree in a simple and vitall unity But if any superfluities of the former Digestions do rush into or are ingendred into the Arteries let that be a diseasie turbulent and confused government I now speak of the ordinary Digestions At length the sixth and last Digestion is perfected in all the particular Kitchins of the Members And there are as many stomacks as there are members nourishable Indeed in this Digestion the in-bred spirit in every place doth Cook its own nourishment for it selfe under which Digestion as there are divers dispositions incident so also divers errors of those dispositions do happen And so the diseases which the Schools do attribute unto their four feigned humours should rather be owing unto things tranchanged But I call things transchanged dispositions which afterwards do in the Arterial blood consequently succeed into the true nourishment of the solid parts The Schools divide these transchanged things into four successive coursary dispositions and as if in these no errour could offer it self they have forgotten the diseases which from hence ought to be attributed to a rank or order Indeed they say the first is because the venal bloud doth within the extremities of the veins obtain the Muscilaginous substance of a raw seed Presently in manner of a dew it is diffused or falls out into the empty spaces of the flesh Thirdly When it is now applyed to the solid parts And lastly When it is assimilated or made like to the thing nourished and is truly informed hereby it assumeth the nature of a solid part which to be the dross of the Schools surely they do not diligently mind For in the first place Neither the Arterial or Venal bloud do wax white in the extremities of the Veins seeing the extream or utmost parts are not potent with any other power of ashop or office which its whole more former Channel of the Vein hath not And so the Vein although it be the vessel of the prepared nourishment for the Kitchins of the solid parts yet the Vein is not the Kitchin of the solid parts Indeed all particular solid parts do nourish their own and proper Kitchin within Therefore the venal and arterial blood are not altered unless they be applyed to the solid parts Because they are diverted by the property of the solid parts into a raw seed but not of their own free accord in the utmost part of the veins Secondly The spermatick Muscilage is not be-dewed by the veins in a solid Member For a Muscillage is badly consonant to a dew But the thin and fluid arterial and venal bloud slideth along within the Kitchins of every part which are only transchanged by the ferment of the place Thirdly Neither are there empty places of flesh which are devised to be greedy of a dew Fourthly Neither is nourishment applyed to the sound or solid parts in manner of a dew which but a little before was a Muscilage Fifthly Neither at length is this dew united and assimilated to the solid parts but what soever happens to be assimilated unto them this is within the yeers of growth but afterwards as the venal and arterial blood have throughly crept into the solid members by a continued sucking of nature so they are there digested and suited and at length expulsed by transpiration Therefore these four Dispositions feigned by the Schools and badly harmonized I meditate to be digested into a Quaternary number for peradventure a hundred Dispositions do interpose before of an Egge of a Chick a solid part I say be constituted of Arterial blood with the blemish of the blindness or giddiness of the Schools wherein nothing is right or true but they do behold the very history of the matter bespotted and to them it is a truth because they have no nourishment of truth without the excrement of Fables Therefore also the veins themselves as they are nourished only with the Arterial blood of the first constitution even so also in this respect perhaps an Artery doth every where accompany a vein For from hence it comes to passe that through the more cruel issuings of bloud at last not venal blood but a whiteness flowes forth or the immediate nourishment of the veins by reason of the
that sense whereby I did percieve that I understood and imagined in the Midriffs and not in the Head cannot by any words be expressed And there was a certain joy in that intellectual cleerness for it was not a thing of a small time of continuance nor happened to me while I slept or dreamed or being otherwise diseasie but fasting and in good health Yea although I before had had experience of some extasies yet I took notice that those have nothing common with this discourse and sense of the Midriff understanding which excludeth all co-operation of the Head Because that I discerned with a sensible reflexion as before I had been forewarned the Head altogether to keep Holiday in respect of the imagination because I did wonder that the imagination should be celebrated out of the Brain in the Midriffs with a sensible pleasantness of operation In the meane time I somtimes in that Joy being in doubt feared least the unwonted chance should lead to madnesse because it had begun from poyson but the preparing of the poyson and only a somwhat light or gentle tasting of the same did insinuate another thing In the mean time although the joyous unthought-of cleernesse or illumination of my understanding did render that manner of understanding suspected yet a most free resigning of my self into the Will of God restored me into my former rest At length after about two hours space a certain gentle giddinesse of my head twice repeated invaded me For from the former I perceived the faculty of understanding to have returned and from the other I felt my self to understand after my wonted manner And then although I afterwards divers times tasted of the same Wolfs-bane yet no such thing ever happened unto me any more But I from thenceforth perfectly learned many things And first indeed that as by extafies certain flourishes of the soul do cleerly appear so by the aforesaid Rule of knowing it appeareth that our understanding as long as we are tied to the Body is originally formed in the Duumvirate or Sheriffdome Secondly And that thing is by so much the more unthought of because the ordinary framing of discourses is about the mouth of the Stomach but not in any Bowel but as it were in the Membrane or Filme of the Stomach as if in an undividable place Nor much othewise doth there inhabite in the Membrane of the Womb a certain Monarchy of the whole yet so that a wound of the Stomach doth presently import life but a wound of the Womb not so Thirdly That for about two hours I did perceive after an unlooked-for manner nothing to be acted in the head and after an undeclarable manner the whole Soul most cleerly to meditate in the Midriffs Fourthly That the like thing doth almost happen in the prayer of silence and more and more manifestly in an extasie Fifthly And that therefore the intellectuall Soul is centrally entertained in the same place Sixthly Then also that as madnesse is a defect of the understanding so therefore that it is stirred up from the part about the short Ribs Seeing the same faculty which in health performs a healthy function suffereth under diseases a defect of the same to wit as oft as the understanding is ecclipsed in its own seat Seventhly I have also certainly sound that the power of willing doth inhabite in the heart for from the heart proceed murders adulteries c. Eighthly That the memory sits in the Brain there imprinted by the soul and that therefore it is in comparison of the other faculties most easily hurt by a disease and old age Yea if any one doth labour that he may remember a thing forgotten he sensibly perceiveth this his labour in the fore-part of his head Ninthly Again seeing the will and memory differ are at a far distance from the seat of the soul or understanding I have concluded with my self that the understanding is of the Essence of the soul and unseperable but the will and memory as they are possessed in the frail life to be frail faculties and of the sensitive life Tenthly To wit that sins are made in the heart and will in the flesh of sin in the will of the flesh and of man Therefore that love is required wholly from the whole mind which by reason of its unseperablenesse is taken for the understanding from the whole heart or will from the whole imaginative soul and the powers thereof dispersed throughout the whole Body Eleventhly I have found the understanding to cast its beams lightsomly into the head yet by the means of a corporall connexion through an Aiery spirit which while it strikes the bosomes of the Head should bring on it a certain giddinesse and cloudly understanding So although for sense and fear the spirits in that state should be plentifully diffused from the brain yet there was likewise need of a singular light which ascending from the midriffs should enlighten the spirit the meane through which it did passe which lightsome beame is no otherwise expressible than that it is intellectuall and exceeding a sublunary contexture or composure Because it is that which ought to be framed by the soul alone which in it self is nothing but a meer understanding or a substantiall and intellectuall Light Twelfthly That because sense and motion stood free I did think there was another Light brought from elswhere or they did denote that there was in that state a free passage of the spirits through the Nerves or Sinews But my giddinesse did signifie that there was a certain obscurity in the head before not perceived and that it was dispersed in the Bosomes of the brain by a new light shining from beneath Thirteenthly That the Liver should be of a due strength or prosper well also the heart of the Spirit should uncessantly blow out into the Brain and likewise the required will of acting should persist indeed but the intellectual Powers onely being stupified in the Brain should as it were sleep if they should not be enlightned by the Midriffs But this light pierceth the whole Body which way it casts its Beams Even so as the light of a Candle doth ruddishly shine thorow the bones of the fingers in younger persons as if the bones themselves were transparent Fourteenthly That from that time I am wont also to have more significative dreams with a more formal discourse and a clearer than before For the minde once as it were retaking the offices of its own Body doth afterwards better understand From whence also afterwards I attained the knowledge how day unto day doth utter the Word and night unto night sheweth knowledge Fifteenthly I was more assured that then my state was one but that of madness the Lethargie Apoplexie c. another For I seriously weighed my self with circumspection whether that were the way whereby men became foolish Seeing that in my full judgement I was so void of all fear that I did contemplate of my own matters not as mine For I
beast by voluntarily flowing down should be limited even into a living soul exclusively And so that it was meet for the mind to be tied to a social form and a formal Light with which it might best agree as in the Chapter of Forms and the book of long life concerning the entrance of death Therefore I first of all decreed that the immortal mind hath not chose a mansion for it self in the heart indeed a bowel so unquiet and greatly extended with so many disturbances and divers offices of the body Also I have shewn that the head is not a fit Inn for the immortal mind because it was busied in governing the motion and sense and especially because its conspiracy being stopped up from the lower parts at one only instant the faculties of the mind being cut off do perish neither do they meditate of the least matter and therefore that it hath not in it the proper operation of the mind the Princesse yea rather I have seen the ill disposed Duumvirate for the most part to disturb the head otherwise well disposed into madnesses And therefore I having admired at the quiet of the Spleen and likewise the withdrawing thereof from the government of the body I intentively considered of this convincing argument If the mind the image of God be centrally in the head it shall be either in the bosoms or in the very substance of the brain But not in this because it is that which wants sense and venal blood being destitute of commerce whereby it may be present with the whole body to which it is bound Indeed it is controverted by none that the head doth rule by sense and motion But that is a lesse bruital and beast-like government But we are constrained to believe being perfectly taught by the disorders of diseases that the head is governed from elswhere in the suspensions or withholdings and exorbitances of the mind But that the soul is entertained in the hollow of the Brain I have judged it unmeet that the immortal soul should have married a wandring and fluid spirit daily arising out of the venal blood for every moment Wherefore it desired a more stable and quiet Inn than that which should be slideable every hour It hath rather rested in the Center or middle of the body in the substance of a bowel whence it might equally commune with all the Members by reason of the unity and continuation of the implanted Archeus But seeing the Organs of the body in respect of the mind are dregs and husk it hath chose out to it self the kernel of the body to wit a gentle spark a formal light or the sensitive soul to wit which the mind hath married by the command of the Lord and what God hath joyned together man may not separate without guilt In the mean time the miserable state of mortals is to be lamented to wit that the mind is tied to the sensitive soul indeed to an impure Being given to concupiscences enticements and pleasures and that the immortal mind doth so easily assent to it as if it would now sleep for ever in the carelesnesse of its own self But not so for by so much is the glory of divine compassion the greater which by its own grace alone doth freely revive and support out of the drowsie sleep of death those whom he will have saved surely else the sensitive soul being subject to diseases and madnesses should be alwayes prone into any kind of pleasures For the first degree of madnesse doth plainly appear in sleep yet is it naturall while with the Title of honest recreation and leisure it sinks it self with a pleasure of rest into its own Inn. Moreover all drowsie sicknesses are the excentricities vices defects and expresse madnesses of natural sleep which indeed do now no longer issue from a proper liberty and pleasure of the sensitive soul but arise from excrementitious filths as it were feverish ones For even as natural thirst is the feeling of lack of moysture but feverish thirst is from the deceitful wilinesses of an excrement So drowsie sicknesses are not made by a natural faculty whereby the soul stirs up sleep to it self but being seduced or overcome by the strange impostures of impurities Therefore sleeping evils and likewise the Apoplexy speechlesnesse c. are not so much the vices of the erring soul as the weaknesses of the same contracted by the Wedlock of vitiated Organs For the companies of impurities do as soon as may be occasionally invade the monarchicall state Not indeed that it is necessary that those materiall impurities do diffuse themselves into the animated or soulified light by a connexion for it sufficeth that they have a stupefactive poysonous force destructive to the sensitive soul because they do alienate the imaginative faculty even so that as of the spittle of a mad dog in the fear of water so also the madnesse of carelesness is introduced by those soporiferous things that power is in those filths potentially and seminally from the beginning very unlike to it self after it hath come to maturity no otherwise than as an Acorn from an Oake Therefore the dregs or filths do imprint a forreign Phantasie on the sensitive soul against its will which manifestly appeareth in Opium Henbane c. And which filthy heap of impurities besieging the sensitive soul in its own original bowel doth make the act of the understanding of the mind drowsie it not being able to shine freely into the sensitive soul thus besieged Wherefore the sensitive soul being destitute of a governess doth stir up tumultuous storms and lists up its own tempest by degrees into the case of the will whence it also becomes wrathful and is carried after an headlong and inverted order At length the head by a preposterous knitting or conjoyning draws out its own images of witty or pleasant things Whence it comes to pass that the doatages being for the most part consumed no remembrance of things done remaineth because the sensitive soul being violently smitten by the besieging hath rashly moved all things whereas otherwise madnesses being void of such filths are for the most part mindful of things done For I have many times certainly found that Doaters have felt before-hand intellectual Images or Representations to be dismissed from beneath to be troublesome upwards and that they have first been weakened about the memory and so that hence also I have gathered that the intellective power is seated far from the head no otherwise than as the parts remote from the heart do first of all feel a defect of a vital bedewing In Doatages I have observed the memory of things once conceived first to stagger and then that instead thereof an importunate and continued remembrance of one thing hath arisen which hath it self in manner of a repeated dream with a most troublesome inversion or confusion and a labour of sleep which labour watchings do presently follow to wit while the foregoing dreamie images have enfeebled the
they nill they they have made all that common to the Stomach So as Cardiogmus or the griping biting of the heart Cardialgia or the pain of the heart have been withdrawn from the Stomach by a transchangeative and borrowed name and likewise swoonings faintings and epileptical insults or fits of the Falling sickness and those things which do seem to carry the Rains of life do take their original from the mouth of the Stomach For in bloud-letting that is daily seen wherein very often presently after a Vein is opened giddinesses of the Head and likewise dulnesses and obscurings of the sight are manifestly felt to spring from the Stomach and to cease again as oft as the finger is laid upon the opened Vein and it being removed from thence the same Sumptoms are again felt to arise from the Stomach and to be stirred up from thence Again the Authority of the Word confirmeth my Paradox in the entrance while it asketh What Cogitations have ascended unto your heart It doth not say they descend unto your heart As neither what Cogitations are bred or do arise from your heart For therefore also many times the Stomach is called by the name of the heart when as Adulteries and sins are reckoned to arise from the heart For every Cogitation in its first Original ought to spring from elsewhere than in the heart For the Pulse and vehement and uncessant motion of the heart would have forbid that thing Because that Cogitation or thinking ought to be made in rest or quiet As oft therefore as Cogitation is attributed to the heart that manner of speaking is according to the acceptation of the vulgar by taking the heart for the Seat of the Soul And although the necessity of Seeds in Plants do tend further unto a multiplicity of Functions and consequently also doth proceed into the diversities of kindes of parts yet the vegetative power doth not therefore depart out of its antient and vegetal Bride-bed wherein it hath once fixt its Seat neither doth it wander or divide it self by reason of the dispersing of the Kitchins That thing happens after a more formal and manifest manner after that the disposition of the Seed hath adorned a Beast-like figure and hath ordained a variety of members For then the sensitive and motive Soul is given and it is not stablished in any other place than in the Root wherein it afterwards prepareth all Fewel or nourishment for it self Indeed in speaking properly and understanding distinctly there is not a certain vegetative Soul in Plants or bruit Beasts but there is a certain vital power and as it were a fore-runner of the Soul But the sensitive Soul takes into it self the Rains of that Archeal power and that vital fore-running dispositive power doth melt in the Archeus and afterwards submits it self unto the sensitive Soul For the Head being as yet occupied with an animal Discourse or the heart stirred with continual Pulses and working uncessantly in the framing of vital Spirits and in transplanting of venal bloud into Arterial bloud are not fit Instruments for the Soul of a Beast But when as this findeth an Inn prepared for it in the Root it there resideth remaineth nor doth wander from thence to another place For in very deed the heart is a servant to the stomach while it all its life long onely employeth it self in framing of the vital Spirits For the entrance of the life of a very tender young begins from sucking and sleep and for some time so continues Both which things do happen in the stomach where indeed the vital Spirits are established and preserved by the soul in the Root in which the same soul doth for the future hope especially to be nourished cherished fewelled and increase For it was never the study or office of the soul to wander or passe from place to place that it may chuse out a Bride-bed for it self because that which is directed by an understanding in-erring is stablished in its own and certain seat from the beginning of life And there is that Center designed from the beginning of Creation for the original of seeds with a command and tye that the soul doth not change its seat or enquire after strange places as it were more commodious for it self For he who rules all things strongly and disposeth of them sweetly hath known the bounds or ends of every appointment There is indeed in the brain of a living Creature a motive virtue and sensitive shop But not that therefore the soul being shaken from its original and primary seat shall wander from its radical Inn designed unto it by the Creator unto the Head For the faculties and functions of the sensitive soul are indeed distributed into a plurality of parts In the mean time the soul it self remains unshaken from its antient place where it was first bound and tied For neither is it divided by reason of the diversities of offices because it perfects all things by the ministring Organ of an Archeus and it being as it were every where present is an assistant to that vital beam First of all it is easily perceived that all the force of the first conceptions and every entring and primitive stirring of disturbances doth happen about the mouth of the stomach For if a Gun send forth a noyse unexspectedly a shaking about the mouth of the stomach is perceived by the same stroak so if a sorrowful Message be brought on a sudden a sudden and speedied alteration is no where felt but in that Central Inn of the soul So that persons against their will and at unawares have before me there placed the desirable Inn of the soul which Inn because it is first in duration discourse motion and the act of feeling of the external senses so it denotes yea convinceth that the original Inn of the soul is in the same place And that thing hath seemed to me most exceeding necessary to be known for the curing of Diseases as I shall demonstrate in its place concerning Diseases For very many have remained without hope of recovery because Remedies have been applied to a member appointed for functions but not to the Root from whence the errour sprang For the Habitation and Court where the edicts are formed being unknown Medicines have been rashly administred unto the places of executions For the place of the sensitive soul being unknown it hath been unknown hitherto that that soul doth there receive the primitive blemish disturbance and contagion of most Diseases And in the same place Medicines ought to be appropriated if from the Root a Medicine for Diseases is to be appointed wherein surely they have most grievously erred hitherto At least the first motions or assaults which are not in our power are long since admitted to happen about the Orifice of the stomach and to climbe upwards to the Head But it is a certain thing that every first motion doth begin from the Center and so that the Center of the soul is
Mother doth perfectly see all things at least but on one side or on the other half onely she also seeth onely half the Needle which she holdeth or presseth with her fingers however she may turn her eyes and head She may see I say many folks being collected into a Company but even to her Girdle or half-sided ones onely shall perhaps then the vapours be divided in halfes the Apple of the Eye nevertheless appearing entire can these vapours I say permit her to see and discern many things together but all things apart in the one or other half onely But an incorporeal Blas of government hath been neglected by the Schools which acteth without a corporeal eflux even as the Moon makes the Sea to swell For in the strangling of the womb they complain as long as they are partakers or Mistresses of talk of the stretching out of the spaces between their Ribs and they think that the Girdle they are girt with is tied to their Ribs or that a staffe is extended from their neather parts unto their Throat c. Consider I pray with me oh ye Schools that there is in us a double motive power and decline from this your thred-bare maxim To wiâ— That the action of the same power is hurt whereby the sound one is exercised For truly there is in us a voluntary Blas and the Blas it self of the parts as elsewhere concerning Convulsions Take ye notice That at least in this place if voluntary motion be natural the will also suffers nothing from the muscles moved by it self yea neither from the muscles refusing to be moved Nor in the next place therefore that there is a weariness of the faculty but onely of the Body or Organs Lastly that the muscles being moved by an importunate Blas of the parts there is not a wearisomness of the parts although the pain be heightned and they do not feel their own weariness because convulsive motions being stirred up by the Blas of the parts are made by a faculty which becomes mad and for this cause they are scarce felt or perceived For neither doth that prove because moysture in Wood or an interposing of a coal between the flame and Roâ—â—n of the intrinsecal Wood do foreslow the action of the fire that it may not the more swiftly consume the Wood with its devouring For truly Impediments do not act properly as neither do they re-act but they do purely and simply suffer They do indeed some way limit the very action of the fire or do seclude the same as it were uncapable partitions and no more For it is proper and natural to fire first to consume water and the more light discussable things into vapours before it in burning do enflame Oily things At length after Oily things to consume the fat which hath more fixedly remained in the coal But neither doth the water re-act against the fire or doth the fire suffer For whether water be in the Wood or not the fire doth alwayes act univocally or singly and according to the appointment of its own nature acteth freely and in such a manner as that it convinceth the aforesaid maxim of falshood Also Gold Talck Marble c. do not re-act on the fire although they are not consumed or wasted by the fire For the manifest incapacity of these hinders it by reason whereof the fire doth not act on those by an ordinary burning or enflaming For truly the fire intends to enlighten those Bodies in themselves dark so as that they may be after some sort made clear or shining bright the which at length it obtains in making them fiery Because the fire endeavours to pierce all things with its own form The which while inflameable things do not sustain without their own ruine therefore in burning they are enflamed and being consumed do depart Neither also doth the fire pretend to enlighten stones and mettals in a moment according as otherwise to the aforesaid Maxim but the fire suits it self in its own nature of acting according to the limitation of every object And so it is perpetually true that every natural Agent acteth and is received after the manner of its own object receiving Therefore the primary action of the fire is to produce in its object a fire like it self wherein some objects do burn under the intention of fire but others do persist and expect the last intent of the fire So that if some things are not combustible at leastwise the fire acteth into them as much as it can to make them fiery In like manner also the light suffers not any thing although at one onely instant it dart it self from the Sun from far on the Earth or although it be not sent thorow through a thick mean hindering it Truly the light suffers nothing by a thick or dark Body whether it shall passe thorow that Body or not For it alwayes attaineth its own intent which is to enlighten whether in the mean time an Impediment doth interpose or not for the resistance or repelling of objected Impediments are not in manner of a re-acting because Agents re-suffer nothing but they are of a meer incapacity Therefore it is plainly indifferent and by accident unto those Agents whether fixed Bodies are enlightned only by the fire and are pierced by the light or not For these things are even after the same manner as the Leaven of Meal in respect of the powder of Glass For the Leaven suffers nothing although the incapacity of the Glass doth hinder whereby the Leaven doth work the lesse For at least there is no re-acting where there is no action These things about the denial of re-acting strife hatred and war between the Agent or doer and patient or sufferer to wit which kinde of action alone the Schools have acknowledged I will add also other new ones I have said in the Book of Fevers that a poysonous excrement in Fevers is included in the Midriffs producing drowsie sleeps doatages c. Therefore it is an anodynous or sleepifying and mad poyson Likewise in Falling-sicknesses that there is an unsensitive befooling and mad poyson afflicting for a space being enstalled in the Midriffs In hypochondrial madnesses that there is a furious poyson or that which doates with jesting or merriment In giddiness of the Head a whirling poyson In the Apoplexie that which takes away sense and motion Lastly in swooning a stupefactive or sleepy poyson a dispersive of the Spirits And hence presently taking away sense and motion But seeing the Schools do not extend themselves beyond a rudeness they have thought that the occasional matters of these Diseases is the matter whereof of Diseases and that it is brought thorow the Veins and Arteries from beneath upwards unto the Brain which thing nevertheless I have refuted for the exposition of that Aphorisme If in a continual Fever after yellow Vrines watery ones shall presently succeed they denote dotages to come by reason as Galen will have it of Choler snatched into
Falling-sickness with a liberty of returning or not according to the requirance of their root Therefore the Head is not onely chief over the lower Organs but also these are likewise chief over the Head the which I have elsewhere declared in a manifest example by hanging For truly the thorny marrow being encompassed in the middle of the turning Joynts cannot be strained by the Rope that it should deny the passage of breathing to the Spirit the mover nevertheless the understanding sense and memory perish at the same instant by reason of the stopping or shutting up of the Arteries of the throat even before an every way stopping of Air whence it is sufficiently manifest that some intellectual light doth continually spring from the lower parts unto the Head by the intercepting whereof presently in hanging and drowning although the Brain thorny marrow and sinews be not hurt every virtue power and light of the Soul doth nevertheless perish As also in a Feverish doatage raised up from the lower parts the discourse of Reason perisheth There is therefore a reciprocal government of the lower parts I willingly confess also that dimnesses giddinesses of the Head deasnesses Apoplexies Epilepsies and other evils of that sort do arise from the lower parts yet not to be derived by vapours unto the Head For if they should ascend by the way of the Throat or Weasand they should at leastwise afford nothing but a distillatory and unsavoury water But I have shewen elswhere that watery vapours or exhalations cannot be carried so much as to the plain of the brain and much lesse into the bosoms of the same Therefore let the fault and guilt of vapours in the aforesaid Diseases be vain And then neither are vapours carried out of the Stomach unto the heart and head through Arteries and Sinewes encompassing the mouth of the stomach Seeing the Schools themselves confess that it is not the office of the sinewes to draw from forreign parts Indeed they will have the Arteries to draw Air for the cooling refreshment of the heart and the pressing out of smoaks Neither of which I have shewen to be true But at leastwise that hath not place here in the Arteries ending into the stomach seeing they do never hope to inspire cold air likewise that not loaded with a smoakie vapour out of the stomach nor out of the bottom of the belly as neither fresh air yea neither in the next place should it be convenient to expel their smoake vapours thither where they should be much more hurtful to the stomach than being detained in their proper seats For the mouth of the stomach hath not undeservedly received its name as to be the mouth of the heart Because more powerful tokens signes of life and more horrible storms of disturbances do arise up out of the stomach than from any other place therefore neither was air to be drawn out of the stomach and much lesse a vapour the fewel and beginning of so many evils or smoakinesses to be expelled into the stomach by the arteries that is giddyish Epyleptical Apoplectical vapours c. are not drawn neither do they voluntarily ascend thorow the Arteries For truly the unutterable Creator hath directed all the aims of things unto the necessities and requirances of uses Lastly therefore if the aforesaid Reeds do not draw hurtful and diseasifying vapours surely much lesse shall the stomach send or expel those thorow the arteries or a sinew Seeing that it could after another manner most speedily free it self by belching For neither is the stomach a pair of bellowes that it ought against the will of the Pipes to derive hurtful vapours conceived for it into the chest of life And moreover the stomach hath but few veins and it is a strange thing for these to beg any thing out of the stomach as hath been proved in its own place wherefore vapours are not carried thorow the veins For which way should they allure and receive that which is besides the appointment of nature How should the stomach snuff up its vapours into most straight or narrow vessels which are filled with bloud especially those which are not strong in drawing For I consider the stomach not indeed after the manner of Galen that it is a sack or naked Kettle dedicated to the cooking of meats but as a vital bowel which is prevalent in tasting smells out a thing and which is driven with divers appetites as if it were a living Creature and now and then it so loatheth some things that a man had rather die than to swallow one morsel which goes against his stomach Indeed the stomach is of necessity serviceable to the whole Body also for the vile Houshold-service of the Kettle But thus far other things do diversly obey it and unless they give serious heed they are cruelly beaten According to that saying He that will be the greatest among you let him be the least Surely the stomach is diligently busied in a low service yet the family-service of the stomach is not therefore vile or base no more than for the High-Priest of the Jewes to have played the butcher but being compared with the stomach he was a certain counterfeit or personage of life with a famous majesty If a Sinew Artery and Vein are seen implanted in the stomach indeed they are rather signes of Clientship and recompences whereby they confess themselves bowels tied or obliged to the stomach than that they were added unto it for Government Mast and Sails But neither indeed will I have this Principality to be so conserred on the stomach as if the Government of that Common-wealth doth wholly belong to that membrane it self For of the Spleen and Stomach I make one onely Wedlock and one Marriage-Bed Wherein I attribute to the Spleen the offices of a Husband in the first motions and to the Stomach in the first sense or feeling Therefore the Stomach is the compleating of the Spleen and the Spleen of the Stomach under the one only Bride-bed of them both is the Principality of one Duumvirate Yet I do never cease to contemplate of that which is sufficiently admirable what the Lord of things hath fore-seen I say in the naked coats of the Brain Womb Stomach Pericardium c. I say in the Membranes but that in things which are abject in the sight of men God hath wont to constitute his wonders whose name be sanctified for ever CHAP. XLIII The Duumvirate or Sheriffdome 1. Sleep is from a Sleepifying or somnoriferous power and not from a defect 2. The Opinion of the Schools concerning Sleep 3. The Opinion of the Antients is opposed 4. Contradictions 5. The thingliness of Opiates 6. The immpossiblity is shewn from the Scituation of the Sinews 7. That Sleep happens the Opiate remaining within the Stomack 8. From the effect of Opium 9. The Sulphur of Vitriol is taught 10. Some absurdities accompanying the position of the Schools 11. A ridiculous privy shift 12. When Dreams are made 13. Why
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
Stomatical and Aromatical things being Distilled Furthermore in as much as in fits of the Falling-sickness all Sense not likewise motion faileth Yet that doth not therefore argue that the sensitive Soul is not the Fountain of both For although all the intellectuall powers do fail and onely the Testimonies of a shaking and leaping motion do remain as long as that Eclipse endureth yet all those Powers are denoted or designed as issuing from the Soul into the Body as if they were proper to it But those Powers which it self hath planted in the Archeus implanted in the Organs are under an Ecclipse and are tumulted by the commotion of the Soul yet they subsist obscured because the Life is not taken away neither doth the Pulse therefore cease But in as much as an unvoluntary convulsive motion doth even still remain that is not to be attributed so much to the Soul as to the singular Life of the Muscles The which indeed I have elsewhere shewn as yet to persevere for some time after Death And that a Tetanus and strait Extension doth begin long after Death So that although the Life of the Muscles doth proceed from the sensitive Soul yet it obtains a certain peculiar Efficacy as also Station of place Therefore it is less wonderful or absurd for the Muscles to be therefore tumulted by their own Motion if on this side Death they have felt the common Life to be Eclipsed But in an Apoplexie and Swooning even the motion of the Muscles also doth plainly fail except the motion of those between the Ribs because then the sensitive Soul doth undergo a total darkness Therefore the Soul the directress of Life according to the divers Tragedies of its perturbations doth manifoldly dismiss its Guardians into the Organs placed under it But every Life seeing it is of the disposition of Lights descending from the Father of Lights it exceeds a humane Understanding And so by an unfit word the Father of Lights is called by the Schooles the Intelligible World who doth least of all fall under our Understanding For neither is the most Glorious Father of Lights and his whole Common-wealth wholy unknown unto us according to the Testimony of Truth to Nicodemus but also the Essence Thingliness Direction and Distribution of the vital Powers do exceed our Capacity For how astonishable is the privation of Understanding Memory yea or of Speech only especially Motion Sense Appetite yea and the integrity of Health remaining And how terrible is the fall of these at every onset of the Falling-sickness Swooning or drousie Evil And how much doth it exceed humane Industrie that so diverse Faculties do arise and inhabit in one Stomack Because so diverse Symptomes do bewray the same hurtings of the Faculties For all things do drive us unto the amazement of a Miracle or Wonder And therefore we being admonished by so many stormes on every side of our Ignorance and Fondness do confess that that one only sensitive Soul is the Fountain of Life also Life the Spring of many Powers and Distributress thereof as well in the healthy as in sick Persons Therefore also if we Physitians ought to lay the Ax unto the root of the tree we are intent for the obtaining of Universal Arcanum's or Secrets which may conserve preserve plant and build up the Life in the very Fountain of Life the Author of Death and Diseases no less than of Health For I now have regard to the frail Soul but not to the incorporeal and immortal Mind The which we believe to be Originally inspired alike and alike perfect in all And therefore Conditions Inclinations Domestick or Forreign Mild or Fierce Tractable or Teachable Humble or Proud are instilled into us by the Mortal Soul Wherein as in a Subject or Place locally disposing the Inclinations of varieties are unfolded which otherwise from the Mind or Image of God are naturally banished Therefore sleep was not in man naturally in respect of his mind but was afterwards sent into him by the Creator But before sleep was bred Sense Motion and Appetite were present Because the Mind as it was thenceforth Immortal it was also unweariable and had no need of Sleep or Rest Yet Sleep was sent into Adam before the Fall Not so much for that he stood in need of Sleep especially a few hours after his Creation as chiefly because by Sleep he was not yet made sore afraid of known Death threatned unto him for eating of the Apple Otherwise Sleep produceth from it self sluggish idleness and foolish vain Dreames and causeth the loss of almost half the Life Whence even at this day from the antient Sleep sent into Adam they have yet retained Dreams That the Old Men shall Dream Dreams the Young Men shall Prophesie And Night unto Night shall shew Knowledge For the sleepifying Power which was sent into the Mind before the Fall and the same also being after a sort free from the wedlock of the Mortal Soul would after some sort draw it into its Original Prerogative of Prophesying unless the darkness of the Soul sprung up and put in place did obscure the same But while I declaim the Stomack to be the Inne of the sensitive Soul and for that cause do dedicate the sink of Diseases to the Stomack I have indeed considered Occasional Causes near the same place to sit as well in the hollowness and bought thereof and being as it were strangers onely there to stick and likewise in the tent of the Bowel Duodenum which is the Prison deputed for the Jurisdiction of the Gaul and Pylorus and most troublesome to Anatomists for its composure of Vessels and Glandules as in the Archeal sheathes no less of that which is inbred as of that which is inflowing To wit that through the conspiring distemperature whereof the sensitive Soul is diversly disturbed and all the Vital Faculties the Chambermaids hereof to be co-shaken and so the same being weakened that an Army of Diseases doth arise as well those Radical or Chronical as those soon hastening as I long since have known being thorowly instructed by many Experiences So that I saw Hunger and unextinguishable Thirst to proceed not so properly from the sharpnesse of the matter provoking as from the very fury of the sensitive Soul For otherwise a Thorexis or Draught or Potion of generous Wine should not dissolve Hunger unlesse Hunger being as it were made drunk by appeasing should soundly sleep And therefore Thirst in Feavers doth not afflict but in its own Stations although the same matter yea and a more cruel heat doth presse more in their Vigour than at other times Now even as the Government of the Stomack hath been enlarged on So also it hath been shewn that the sensitive Soul doth there abide as in the first or chief Kitchin of the Meats and that the Life doth there Inhabit For truly the most potent Powers of transchanging and digesting do there exercise their Offices and therefore not onely Kitchinfilths are
But if it listeth us to enquire into the cause hereof It is certain that Eve after the eating of the forbidden Apple made her self subject to the itch of Lust stirred up and admitted the Man unto copulations and from hence that the conceived humane Nature was corrupted and remaining degenerate thenceforward Through the Cause of which corruption Posterity are deprived of an incomparable purity From whence there is place for conjecture that Eve did by the Member through which she became subject unto many Miseries testifie among posterity a successive fault of her fall and bloody defilement in Nature For the part wherein the Image of God ought to be conceived by the holy Spirit became a sink of filths and testifies the abuse and fault of an unobliterable sin and therefore also suffers Because In sorrow shalt thou bring forth thy Sons in manner of bruit beasts because henceforward thou shalt conceive after the manner of bruits For so that Curse hath entred into Nature and shall there remain And by the same Law also a necessity of Menstrues For before sin the Young going forth the Womb being shut had not caused pain Wherefore it is lawful to argue from the Premises That the incomparable Virgin-Mother of God the Ark of the Covenant never admitted into her any corruption and by consequence was never subject to Menstrues as neither to have suffered womanish discomodities Because she was she who by the good pleasure of God hath the Moon and the Properties of the Moon subjected under her feet Unto Whom next unto God be Honour and Praise CHAP. CIX Life IF I must at length Phylosophize of Long Life I must first look into what Life is and then what the Life of Man what immortal and Adamical Life is afterwards what a Sensitive and Short Life is what a Diseasie what a Healthy Life what the Life of the World and what Eternal Life is To which end it is convenient to repeat some Lessons from my Premises First of all therefore Life is a Light and formal Beginning whereby a thing acts what it is commanded to act But this Light is given by the Creator as being infused at one onely Instant even as Fire is Struck out of a Flint it is enclosed under the Identity and Unity of a Form and is distinguished by general Kindes and Species But it is not a fiery combustive Light a consumer of the radical moisture It is as well Vital in the Fish as in the Lyon and as well in the Poppy as in Pepper Neither also doth heat fail in us by reason of a consumption of the radical moisture Neither on the other hand doth moisture fail through a defect of heat but onely through a diminishment and extinguishment alone of the vital Powers and also of the Light The Fire Light Life Forms Magnal Place c. are neither Creatures not Substances as neither comprehended in the Catalogue of Accidents Neither therefore do I distinguish the Form in vital things from their Life the mind of Man being on both sides excepted To wit there is a certain Life which is mute or dumb and scarce appeareth such as is met with in Minerals The which notwithstanding do declare that they live and perform their Offices by their Marks and remarkable Signs of vital Faculties And then there is another Life which is a little more unfolded or manifest Such as is in the Seeds of things tending to the period of their Species In the next place a Third Life is seen in Plants increasing themselves and bringing forth off-spring by a successive multiplying Next a Fourth Life is manifest in bruit Beasts by Motion Sense and a voluntary Choice with some kind of Discourse of Imagination At length the Last Life is now obscured in the Immortal Mind and Substance and is after some sort unfolded by the sensitive Soul its Vicaresse The Life therefore is not the Balsam not the Mummy not in the next place the Spirit of the Arterial Blood although this Spirit be the Conserver of the Body Because the Life is not a Matter yea nor a Substance but the very expresse Form of the Thing it self Moreover I being about to speak of the Immortal Life of Men I will follow the Text For indeed because the punishment of the broken Precept was Death For Death came not from God but from the condition of a Law I say the Almighty made not Death as neither a Medicine of Destruction in the Earth And that must be understood onely in respect of Men For neither ought the whole Nature and Condition of the Universe to be bespattered for the Sin of Adam so as that Bruits are made subject to Death through the corruption or deviation of our kind For truly even before Sin Bruits ought to dye to wit some whereof the Lord of things had substituted for meat and fodder to others For they ought naturally to dye every annihilable Life and Form whereof were onely one and the same thing Indeed it was of necessity that those Forms should perish whatsoever do obtain their first or chief antecedent and subsequent dispositions from a corporal wedlock of the Seeds The Death therefore of Bruits was not worthy of the word Death which included an extinguishment and annihilating of a Light but not a separation of the same with a preservation of the Light separated Therefore it was the great God his good pleasure that he made Man into the nearest Image of the Divine Majesty as a living Soul nor subject unto death Therefore neither is it said that God made Death It is therefore believed that Adam before transgression was Immortal from the goodness of the Creator Therefore I knew that Adam indeed was Immortal before the transpression of a Law Yet that it was not natural unto him from the root of Life but for the Tree of Life's sake For otherwise the planting of this Tree in Paradise had been vain if Man could not have suffered the successive alterations and calamities of Ages That Tree therefore was created for the powers and necessities of Renovation renewing of Youth yea and prevention of Old Age For although the Body by Creation was not capable of being wounded nor subject unto Diseases yet it had by little and little felt the successive changes of Ages if its vigor had not been continued by the Tree of Life For neither is it to be believed that the Lord of things the Saviour of the World was of a worse constitution than our first Parent But that the Redeemer of the World died and so felt the Calamities of Ages that in his thirty second year he was reckoned fifty years of Age. That happened not from his Nature nor from the root of his Life For Death as also the rottenness of Dayes had no right over him but out of his infinite goodness whereby he had appointed himself a Surety for our Sins he would subject himself to miseries and so also to Death in his most glorious
his custom in the corner of a Floor presently lay down as being afflicted with a bloudy and cruel strangury but any Remedies of Physitians were in vain except that as oft as he drank of the aforesaid Ale he perceived a notable ease but as oft as he arising out of the Bed-cloathes walked up and down and pissed in his wonted place he presently suffered Relapses At length there was seen a pin made of old and black Oaken wood fastened or thrust into the place whereat his accustomed urine issued out That pin therefore being pulled out and burnt by the drinking of that Ale he remained altogether free from that bloudy strangury And then I remember that Karichterus writeth that he had loosed the like sort of Enchantments onely by pissing through Birchâ—â—â—â—oomes CHAP. IX Sensation or feeling unsensiblenesse pain lack of pain motion and unmooveablenesse through diseases of their own rank the Leprosie Falling-evil Apoplexy Palsey Convulsion Coma or Sleeping-evil c. 1. Grating or fretting only is reputed the cause of the pain of him that hath the Stone in the Reines 2. The opposite is prooved 3. For so the Urine-pipes should want a feeling 4. The definition of pain according to the Schooles 5. The opinion of the Antients and Moderns concerning the first or cheif organ of the senses 6. But it teacheth nothing besides vain words 7. The implicite Blasphemies of the Schooles 8. That the braine is not the immediate organ of sense and motion 9. What hath deceived the Schooles about these things 10. A better attention or heed of some 11. From whence they have so perswaded themselves 12. The Authours meditation about sense and motion 13. A speculation about the solution in a wound of that which held together 14. A solide part doth not feel of it self 15. Three organs subordinate to motion 16. The Schooles go back from their former supposition 17. That the sinew is not the proper instrument of all sense 18. A consideration of tho Leprousie â—9 All sinewes dedicated to motion are also sensible 20. The errours of the Schooles about the Leprousie 21. The errour of Paracelsus 22. The unconstancy of Paracelsus 23. The unsensiblenesse of the Leprosie from whence it is 24. Manginesse and the Pox or fowle disease how they differ from the Leprosie 25. Scabbednesse requires not internal remedies 26. The Reader is admonished 27. Wherein the difficulty of curing the Leprousie is seated 28. Hipocrates had not as yet known the immediate subject of sence 29. Life what it is 30. A nearer Doctrine concerning sense 31. The immediate subject of sense 32. A deaf or dull definition concerning the Sensitive soul 33. How Sensation or the act of feeling happens 34. Why for sensation there is no need of recourse unto the Braine 35. The seate of the Mind 36. What pain is 37. In what sense paine may be action and passion 38. Paine and a disease by what Beginning they may be made 39. Of what sort anger and fury are in this place 40. Pain what sort of passion it is 41. Concerning the Apoplexy 42. The manner delivered of making the Apoplexy is ridiculous 43. Paracelsus about this place is a like frivolous and unconstant to himself 44. The meditation of the Authour 45. Some absurdities accompanying the Schooles 46. A new distinction of causes 47. A stopping up of the arteries in the throate what it may argue 48. That a positive Apoplexy is hitherto unknown by the Schooles and practitioners 49. That the Apoplexy and Palsie are not made from the afflux or flowing of phlegm into the bosome of the Braine 50. Galen is ridiculous in the neâ—like contexture of the brain 51. An examination of some remedies 52. That an Apoplexy is not the primary affect of the braine 53. That there is a tasting in the midriffs 54. A secondary passion is prooved to be from below 55. The properties of the head how far they may ascend in themselves 56. A true Apoplexy is positive not privitive and that the Schooles are ignorant of 57. The astonishment or unsensiblenesse of the Schooles is noted by the astonishment of the fingers 58. The manifold impossibility of the Schooles which followes upon a privative Apoplexy 59. The Schooles are astonished in the astonishment of the touching 60. A history of the astonishment of the hands from a Quartane Ague 61. The rise or original of a positive Apoplexy 62. The Palsie is a contracture or convulsion of the sinewy marrow 63. The Palsie is oftentimes without the Apoplexy 64. The shortnesse of the neck what it may argue 65. From whence frictions or rubbings in an Apoplexy were instituted 66. Why they are ridiculous 67. The anguishes of the Schooles 68. The rubbing of the skinne contradicts the phlegme of the Cerebellum or little brain of the hinder part of the head 69. The generation of the stupefactive or sleepifying matter of an Apoplexy 70. Why the Apoplexy is called by the Germans a stroak 71. The place of an Apoplexy is proved to be in the Duumvirate 72. The stumbling of the Schooles about the examination of the property of simples 73. Against the position of the Schooles concerning the phlegme of the fourth bosome of the braine 74. The perplexities of the Schooles concerning the hurting of the sense motion remayning safe and on the other hand 75. It is explained by some positions why sense may be hurt motion remayning safe 76. The Apoplexy after the manner of hereditary diseases lurks in the formative faculty of the seed 77 Against the cause of the Schooles for an Apoplexy 78. Against the cause of the Schooles for a Palsey 79. The causes of the Apoplexy 80. That the Apoplexy doth not consist of a privative cause 81. The definition of an Apoplexy 82. What a true Palsie is 83. Diverse stupefactive remedies 84. That sleepifying medicines as such do not cure madnesses 85. What hath deceived the Schooles herein 86. A sweet Anodine orpain-ceasing medicine is harmlesse 87. Why Anodines as such do not presuppose cold 88. What a sleepifying medicine is 89. An Anodine pertaining to the Falling-sicknesse differs from that of the Apoplexy 90. A returne unto paine 91. There is a forreigne consent for paine 92. From whence paines are con-centrall with the stars 93. Whether the venal blood be informed by the soul 94. Sense and pain wherein the may subsist 95. What may cause paine and after what sort 96. Whether sense or seeling be made passively 97. The primary cause of paine and sense 98. The Schooles stay behind 99. The consideration of life hath regard hitherto 100. A vainprivy shift of the Schooles 101. A demonstration of the fire that pain and sensation may from thence cleerly appear 102. That these things have layen hid to the Schooles 103. What is to be considered for searching into the proper agent of paine 104. The rules of the Schooles concerning the activity of simples is reproved by the way 105. From whence the Schooles have been deluded
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
the aforesaid poyson and also confound or dissolve the ice of the foregoing winter with a new Spring And although that poyson be fermental in respect of the poyson and therefore also from a formal quantity of it self it endeavours to creep into all places afterwards yet it is not apt as to be co-fermented equally with the spirit by reason of the force and fighting nobleness of the Subject into which it is received and the drowsie sluggishness of its icie disposition For such is the difference in contagious things that the poysons of some things do voluntarily or by art depart and are separated from and forsake the bodies infected by them But of others that there is no voluntary division to be hoped for for the ice of the Leprousie doth the rather besiege the more outward parts because it is an icie malady and is thrust forth abroad by the in-bred heat for therefore it more defiles the Standers by towards their outward parts than their more inward bowels which are co-touching with them in the root in the unity of life But no Physitian ever cured the Leprosie which obtained not the Liquor Alkahest The which since it is of a most tedious preparation none although skilful in art shall come unto the obtainment thereof whom the most High shall not by a special gift conduct thither For he must needs be chosen and endowed by a particular priviledge if he ought to obtain that Medium or Mean To wit whereby as well sensitive as unsensitive sublunary bodies are equally pierced even into the seminal and intrinsecal root of their first Being therefore also it subdueth and changeth all things under it without a re-acting of the Patient and impoverishing of the Agent For otherwise it is vain whatsoever hope the Leprosie shall perswade it self of from elsewhere Therefore in times past the curing of those that had the Leprosie was granted for a sign unto the Messias alone My first born daughter being now five years old became leprous and that more and more and at length wan Ulcers and horny white scales grew throughout her whole body But then the image of the Virgin Lady newly shewed it self by many Miracles in our City famous for the Hospital of St. James The Girle therefore being now seven years of age desired to go to the place and the Grandmother with her Nephew hasten thither and she returns after an hour sound and forthwith the scales fall off Presently after a year the same Leprosie suddenly returned And I confessed my self guilty that I had concealed the honour of the Lady Virgin Therefore my little daughter returnes with her Grandmother unto the sacred Image and she again returned healed and so afterwards remained But I fearing the return of the Leprosie divulged the Miracle and by a publick Writing confessed the favour and clemency of God unto whom be all praise and glory with the sanctifying of his name for ever I have already said that sensation or the act of feeling according to the mind of Hippocrates doth as well effectively as susceptively or receivingly consist in the Animal spirit But because all such spirit is dead and a dead Carcass unless it be illustrated from the life it self And because life it self in that spirit is not proper unto it and unseparable from it but life is from the vital or animal spirit I now confound them both in name it being distinct in the whole subject the which elsewhere more manifestly concerning long life therefore first of all it is manifest that that vital spirit doth not immediately feel but that it is the very life it self which doth the more nearly and immediately feel and grieve or pain in that spirit For indeed I have demonstrated in the Treatise Concerning the Forms of Things that the life or form of things is a certain light a special Creature shining in its own Inne throughout all the Guardians of the parts yet that it is not a substance nor an accident however by reason of the so great Novelty of the thing the School of the Peripateticks may crack Which Paradox I have demonstrated by Mathematical demonstration and Mechanically in the book of the Elements And so I here assume it as being elsewhere sufficiently proved I will therefore speak much more nearly than Hipprocrates concerning Sensation and Sense That if Sensation or the act of Feeling were in times past said to be made with a passion of the body wherein the spirit making the assault receiveth the impression of the thing to be felt and the which therefore is abusively called the very Sensible Species it self We now understand that this impression is in one only moment and in the same point â—sinuated into the life existing in it To wit under which Insinuation Application and Suiting Sensation doth then first arise being made in the life it self and by the life Of which life indeed Sense it self is an unseparable property And seeing Life is not of a body nor proper to a body nor lastly of the Off-spring of corporeal properties but is a light comming into it by the gift of the Creator beyond the condition of the Elements and Heavens Hence also Sensation is not of bodies nor of matter nor of a solution of the Con-tinual c. But plainly a vital property proceeding from the very trunk of life As also it is not sufficient that there be an Eye a Mean a vital Spirit that Seeing may be made but moreover there is required an application of the visual spirit unto the Life and therefore the effect of seeing however altogether ordinary doth exceed the whole Elementary nature because it contains the image and co-resemblance of the Life it self for that Seeing Tasting Smelling Touching c. are the immediate effects of the Life sporting it self or playing thorow its own Organs For in all sense it must needs be that the allurements of the spirits and the Species of things perceived are fitted immediately to the life if sensible acts do at any time happen But indeed in a matter so difficult and so far separated from the common Doctrine grant me Reader that I may as yet talk more nearly with thee For thou hast perceived that it is not sufficient unto Sense and Sensation to have have said that the Brain and likewise the Sinew is the immediate Organ of Sense nor also that it is enough to have implored for this purpose the inflowing spirit yea or the spirit it self implanted in the parts as it is cherished from the influxing vertue of the brain or nerves unless unto all these the life shall concurre For Sensation it self is of so great a weight that it easily exceeds the compass of all Sublunary things together with the whole power of the Heavens and Elements Therefore since thou hast already perceived that I will speak further For what things I have now spoken concerning the Life I have shewen in my whole book Of long Life whereunto I dismiss thee for speedy
sometimes made in these so ready and stubborn a perseverance of affection that it presents a Spectacle of Admiration to the Beholder especially if any one doth examine the attributes of the Life and spiritual Seed For how most suddenly are Children Women and improvident people angry do weep and laugh For the sensitive Souls of those do freshly as it were immediately even adhere unto sensible things It is therefore a natural thing that the sensitive Spirit is voluntarily and easily carried into these kinds of overflowings because that Soul being easily received by its own sensual judgement slides into the voluntary passions of material Spirits and as even from a Child these same exorbitances have encreased so afterwards that Soul growes to ripeness as wrothful furious and wholly symptomatical the which otherwise would far more safely perform all things under meeknesse or mildnesse than as by reason of furies to aspire into Diseases and now and then unto its own death which is frequent and most manifest in Exorbitances of the Womb and in the Symptomes of some Wounds and of other Diseases Anger therefore and Fury in this place are not of the man but of that Sensitive Soul brought into the Life which begetteth the animosities of a natural Sensation and the which therefore doth oftentimes ascend unto a great height that it burns to an Eschar and blasts the part with a Sphacelus or mortifying Inflammation like fire Pain therefore is an undoubted Passion of the Sense of Touching wherein the sensitive Soul expresseth a displeasure with the Object according to the differences of the conceived Injury brought on the parts Furthermore Whether that Passion be the Office or Performance of a judicial power from whence the Soul is by a proper Etymology named Sensitive no otherwise than as the motive faculty moveth only by the beck of the Soul without an external or forreign Exciter Or indeed whether pain be a Passion immediately produced from a sensible paining cause the Schools might have sifted out if as great a care of diligent searching into the truth as of receiving a Salary from the sick had ever touched them But with me that thing hath long since wanted a doubt For truly Seeing the Sense of Pain is the Judgement of the Soul expressed by the act of feeling in the Sensible Faculty whereby the Soul bewails it self of the sensible hurtful and paining Object Therefore both of them being connexed together do almost every way concur and both also stand related after each its own manner unto pain For indeed the cause being a sensible injury is the motive of pain But the sensitive Soul it self gives judgement of the painful Object with a certain wrothfulnesse and impatiencie of Passion The which indeed in a wound Contusion or Bruise Extension or Straining Burning and Cold as being external Causes is altogether easie to be seen But while the motive Causes of Pain are neither applied from the aforesaid impression of external Objects or from a proper Exorbitancy within and the Sensitive Spirit is from thence made wholly sharp gnawing biting degenerate and forms the blood like it self Then indeed the Sensitive Soul in paining doth not only give a simple judgement concerning Pain But moreover she in her self being wholly disturbed brings forth from her self a newly painful product no otherwise than if that Product proceeded from an external occasional Cause And although both these do in a greater Passion and more grievous Sensation for the most part concur yet in speaking properly Pain doth more intimately respect the Censure brought from the Sensitive Soul the Patient Or Pain doth more nearly reflect it self on the property of the Soul than on the paining cause Because many are grievously wounded without manifest pain even as also a furious man shewes that he scarce feeleth Paines from hurtfull Causes Some things also do oftentimes delude the paines of Torture and Unctions do also deceive paines although the parts are beaten with injury Wherefore Sense doth more intimately and properly respect the Censure of the power of the sensitive Soul than the injury of the painfull Cause But truly I am diverted elsewhere as for the cause of the aforesaid unpainfulnesse in the Leprosie and unmoveablenesse in the Apoplexy c. The Schooles indeed contending for the Brain as the chief Organ of Sensation and pain do therefore take notice that the Brain being by its own property of passion immediately and as it were by one stroak touched doth lose even both sense and motion at once yea that it doth contract either of the sides But the manner of making they thus expresse The fourth bosom of the Brain it being a very small little bosom beginning from the Cerebellum the beginning of the Thorny marrow is stopped up by phlegme from whence ariseth an Apoplexy in an instant For Nature being unwilling or not able to draw back or reduce that phlegme once slidden down thither being diligent is at leastwise busie in laying aside that phlegme into either side of that pipe from whence consequently a Palsie of that side begins These things indeed we read concerning the Apoplexyand Palsie yet nothing of the contracture arising through the stroak of the Head Paracelsus also not being content with this drowsie Doctrine of three Diseases is also tumbled in unconstancy For sometimes he saith That the Apoplexy and Palsie following thereupon is bred for that the sensitive Spirit in the Nerves or Sinews hath from the Law of the Microcosme after the manner of sulphurous Mines contracted like Aqua vitae a flame from the fire of Aetna Through which inflammation the Sinewes and Tendons being afterwards at it were adust burnt and as it were half dead are dryed up together with the muscles and therefore they do thenceforth remain deprived of sense and motion To wit he Constitutes these two Diseases considering nothing the while of the Contracture or Convulsion from the stroak not indeed in the Case of the Brain but in the utmost Branches of the Nerves as though they were affects hastening from without to within But in another place he judgeth not a certain sulphurous or inflamed matter to be the cause of the Apoplexy but he accuseth Mercury onely to wit one of the three things which he calls His own Beginnings of Nature as being too exactly Circulated and affirmes that through its abounding subtility or finenesse it is the conteining Cause of every sudden Death Elsewhere he recals the Apoplexy unto the Stars of Heaven And in another place again being unconstant he teacheth That every Apoplexy is made of gross vapors stopping up the Arteries and restlesse beating Pipes of the Throat and that there is also an Eclipse of the Lunaries or Moon-lights of the Brain in us from a Microcosmicall necessity Therefore hath he in like manner whirl'd about the causes of the Vertigo or giddinesse of the Head unto uncertainties To wit himself being wholly Vertiginous But I have otherwise proceeded Whatsoever doth primarily feel
suspended motion not in one side only even as in the Palsie For from thence I confirmed my self that the influences and communion of the inferiour Bowels were taken away from the Brain by the interception of a Bond or Obstacle From whence also I consequently supposed that the first Conceptions were formed elsewhere than in the Head according to that saying of Truth Out of the heart proceed adulteries murders c. I found moreover that the Apoplexy astonishment or unsensiblenesse Palsie giddinesse of the Head Falling-Evil Convulsion c. were passions arising from a positive occasional Cause and much differing from privative ones the Constrictives or fast binders together of the sinews passages and Spirits which Causes have been hitherto neglected by the Schooles by subscribing in the aforesaid Diseases to wit unto Heathenish Doatages stablishing phlegme in the fourth little bosome of the Brain When as in the mean time the like and positive faculties do every where occur in Opiates and likewise in sleepy and Epileptical Diseases I remember also that I at sometime in my young Beginnings distilled some poysonous things the which if at any time the junctures of the Vessels being not well stopped there expired an odour from them or that afterwards in separating the vessels from each other they struck me at unawares I was at one onely instant ready for a fall together with a giddinesse of the Head and a benummednesse of my right side So that if the Odour had once onely again smitten me without doubt I had fallen as being Apoplectical Indeed an ardent desire of knowledge in times past constrained me into so great rashnesse that a thousand times I have not spared my own life Therefore in the tearms proposed truly that Odour did not stir up phlegme threatning to slide down and a new and fresh blast of ayr again removed it not out of the bosome of the Brain Therefore if some Simples do bring a drowsie Evil giddinesse of the Head a cessation of Motion and an obscuring of Sense it is not unlikely that the like things to these do also suddenly spring up within Neither is it seemly alwayes to dedicate all these effects to the depriving stoppage of one phlegme For I remember that a person being smitten with an Apoplexy dyed in two hours and seeing there was a suspition of poyson offered him a Dissection was appointed His Scull therefore being taken away thirteen studious men pleasantly took away the Menynx's or Coates of the Brain and then the Cerebellum or little Brain being modestly opened not any thing of phlegme was found in the fourth Bosome as neither was there any thing found to have fallen downwards into the Thorny Marrow by those diligently narrow Enquirers Therefore I shall never be induced to believe with the Schooles that the Apoplexy is a phlegmy stoppage of the fourth bosome of the Brain as neither can I believe the Palsie to be an obstruction of either side of the Thorny marrow First of all the unprosperous healing of these Diseases do bewray the sluggish Enquiries into Causes And then the Apoplexy hath so negligently and ignorantly been handled hitherto that it is as yet in the Schooles destitute of a proper word For truly it hath retained its Name from a folding or small Net of Arteries dreamed by Galen or being delivered to him being credulous from some other which small Net Anatoâ—y hath not as yet hitherto seen But Galen his feigned fine Net hath forsaken him as a rash Asserter of Trifles and a ridiculous Dissecter So that it is now clearly manifested by Andrew Vesalius being the Author That Galen never saw a humane dead Carcase dissected and that he described his Doctrine of Anatomy word for word out of some other no otherwise than as he did his Herbarisme out of Diascorides Therefore I have easily learned that of necessity not onely the place and manner of making but also that the whole Tragedy and due Remedies of an Apoplexy are wholly unknown in the Galenical Schooles For the method of curing it hath confirmed that thing unto me For I have often seen in a new Apoplexy by Vomitive Medicines but otherwise comforting ones being afterwards added the Speech Sense and Motion to be restored But all either side of whom had failed I have seen cured by the Mercurius Diaphoreticus of Paracelsus elsewhere by me described For that Sudoriferous Mercury as it cures without any Evacuation so also it hath brought desired help without the Revulsion of phlegme out of the fourth bosome of the Brain For I having followed the Doctrine of the Holy Scriptures by their fruits ye shall know them Have learned To wit from the latter and from the effect That the original of the Apoplexy is positive but not privative or by a stopping up of the bosome of the Cerebellum lum made by phlegme suddenly falling down thither Especially because that from affects of the Womb Apoplexies and Palsies do oftentimes arise They ceasing Remedies being administred to the Womb and those being neglected they are either choaked as being truly Apoplectical or do also languish with a Palsie for their life-time Finally I have known that the entry of an Apoplexy is in the Midriffs but in the Brain not but by a secondary passion whereby the Brain doth successively hearken unto the Government of inferiour parts For neither do vomitive Medicines as neither also the aforesaid sudoriferous one withdraw any thing from the hinder little Bosome and much lesse from the hollownesse of the Thorny marrow And that thing they have known as many as have ever been present at the Dissection of those parts And likewise Odoriferous and succouring Essences being drunk should never be derived unto the Head if it were stopped or beset yet they do presently sensibly help Because there is in the Midriffs their own tasts and their own proper smelling And moreover their own touching also is from hence communicated to the body by meanes of the sensitive soul being every where present Which thing although I have elsewhere sufficiently proved concerning long Life yet it shall here be profitable to have confirmed it at least by one Example Therefore if any one shall drink a Scammoneated poyson masked with sugar and spice the Tongue and Pallat do indeed commend it for the first turn but at a repeated one the horrour of the Midriff and aversnesse of drinking will discover the errour of the masked tast And that which otherwise is sweet to the Tongue is made horrid to the Midriffs It s no wonder therefore that there is a singular Tast and Touching in the same place and that it is from thence diffused into the members and that those Senses of the Midriffs are presently refreshed by the Essences of the Odour but slowly and never if they are applyed unto the Nostrils Pallat and seames of the Scull For I have taken notice of some things which cause not onely the drowsie Evil or Catalepsie but also foolish madnesse and
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
manner of a stroak The place therefore of the nativity of an Apoplexy is in the Midriffs and therefore it hath also the foreshewing signs of giddiness of the head of benummedness nauseousness c. The place therefore of an Apoplexy is in the Archâ—us of the Midriffs but in every of the parts for a particular astonishment because through the errour of Digestion the Liquor that is immediately to be affimilated by reason of the defect of the Archeus degenerates into an Anodynous poyson and is made the occasional matter of so great a malady an excrement I say being sealed by an Idea of the abhorring Archeus is sealed on the dreg who is to shew forth an equally aged memory of his own hostility But that it doth not depart from thence nor obey Remedies known by the Apothecary the very Quartan-ague teacheth the which hitherto repeates its Tragedy at pleasure to the disgrace of Physitians If a Quartan-ague be uncurable by the Schooles much more an Apoplexy For the stupefactive poyson of an Apoplexy is milder indeed in it self than that of the Falling-sickness but it far more cruelly molesteth with its invasion For besides astonishment it strikes the mind begets a deep drowsinesse and a Catochus or unsensible detainment But if besides it also attaines a sharpnesse it produceth malignant Ulcers according to the mortifying of the Anodynous poyson But because that poyson is brackish therefore it threatens Atrophia's or Consumptions for lack of nourishment For I have observed a Chymist who had been a good while occupied about Râ—gis's to have fallen into terrible beatings of the Heart at length into paines of his armes and his mouth was pulled on the right side he suffered also restless nights and deep paines of his armes the which notwithstanding were not exasperated by touching He had also consumed with a notable leanness by reason of the conceived brackishnesses of the waters in the mean time any the more external Remedies were attempted in vain for neither did I spare costs or service for him but he being fully restored by a Laudanum onely for thirteen dayes administred soon after recovered the habit of his body and former strength For because the harsh brackishness of the Liquors had defiled the sensitive Spirit the product whereof pierced the Archeus his mouth being pulled together unto one side and his fingers being wâ—ithed side-wayes resembled a certain Apoplectical Being But because it ascended not from the Governour of the Midriffs but only the Odours of the waters had immingled themselves with the inflowing sensitive Spirit there was not a perfect Apoplexy of that man although otherwise one giddie enough But because I call that a brackish Anodynal or stupefactive which in Opium is a bitter one but not in Henbane or Mandrake and a very sweet one in Vitriol and Sulphur This first of all discovers the Errours of the Schooles while as from commonly known Savours they divine of the faculties of Simples But indeed I know that the interchanges of things or the maturities of days are not yet digested nor likewise That Truth instead of falshood will please every one therefore I will subjoyn some Anguishes which the Apoplectical Rules of the Schooles have brought forth unto me For while I insisted more than was meet in the examination of Minerals I felt from the Fume of some of them an Apoplexy to be at hand with a defect of my left side and so that I had fallen headlong down if I had as yet but one onely turn breathed in the ayr of that place Wherefore I learned first of all that the Palsie is not more latter that an Apoplexy in duration Then again that there is no stoppage in the bosomes of the Brain For I was already almost prostrated and unlesse I had turned away my head from whence the stinking cruel blast breathed I as Apoplectical had rushed down and I was ready to fall And then my arm did already decay and my leg being stupified failed of sense and motion But the Schooles will never answer to these particulars if nothing of phâ—egme had ever fallen into the fourth bosome of the Brain how was the effect in me before its Cause But if any thing thereof had fallen down which had at least stopt up the half of its Bosome which way retired that phlegme so speedily Or why is not every Apoplexy likewise by the same endeavour voluntarily cured the phlegme which is the Effectresse thereof vanishing but if they had rather privily to escape that my Apoplexy came from the mischievous vapour and not that to be from phlegme At leastwise why was that cruel Fume brought sooner unto the fourth Bosome than unto the former ones and those nearer and more obedient unto the Nostrils unlesse perhaps the former were Leprous and sluggish and without Sense Yea all the sinews which are deputed unto the Senses alone receive their sensitive spirits from the former Bosomes But in the former Ventricles of the Brain there was no sign of the hurting of Sense yet there is no coming from without unto the fourth Bosom but through all the foremost ones Sense likewise except that it was the more dull on one side and motion remained and also a Judgement perswading a departure Therefore had the phlegme waited now for some years at the coast of the fourth Bosome that the Odour of that Fume being once repeated it the signe as it were of a Trumpet being given might rush headlong into the pit Why therefore fell not the phlegme down in me a leaping Run-away For in the Falling-sicknesse the chief powers of the Soul and Senses on both sides go to ruine motion onely surviving when as notwithstanding every sinew even that which is dedicated to motion feeleth Therefore the Brain and all its Bosoms ought to be affected on both sides where the more internal senses together with the more external ones are laid asleep as if they were extinguished How therefore doth motion alone remain After what manner in the Falling-Evil Apoplexy and Palsie are the senses laid asleep when as in the Apoplexy and Palsie the Organ of motion onely is besieged for one half They will say that in the Epilepsie the foremost parts of the Brain do suffer but the hinder ones remain safe First of all Why therefore are the joynts contracted if the Organs of motion are free The memory is especially hurt in the Falling-sickness shall therefore that also â—e onely in the forepart of the Head But that which is required being granted why therefore hath every sinew designed for motion leaping through the Thorny marrow from the hinder part of the Brain lost Sense but not Motion Therefore the Brain in the Falling-Evil is sore smitten as well behind as before by Midriff-Causes Foâ— oft-times some one that is about to dye doth as yet feel or perceive speak and hear motion in his lower parts being taken away a good while before by the displayed sinewes of the Thorny marrow The Brain being
the vital Archeus but not in the feigned phlegme of that bosome there is hid an effective reason why the Archeus being Apoplectical doth alwayes bend the Palsey its Lackey unto the side but it is a mockery whatsoever the Schooles have dreamed of the fourth little bosome The whole reason of Truth therefore depends in these same Diseases as the Archeus forms and perfects a Seminal Idea the which he for the most part finds somewhat cadaverous or mortified in meats and the transmutations of these For then he causeth giddinesses of the head and the more tough ones if the same thing happens in the excrements in the passage from Food into nourishment and that Apoplexy is most exceeding readily inclined which forms it sealing Idea in the very Archeus of the Duâ—mvirate Because the whole Archeus in the Bowels is straightway as it were mortified At length from sundry particulars laid down I conclude That an Apoplexy is in no wise a privative Disease and that the stoppages of the sinews do far differ here-from as in the writhing or wresting aside of the turning Joynts in hanging c. Also that neither of them doth arise from an obstruction of the fourth bosome in the Cerebellum at the beginning of the Thorny marrow But the Apoplexy is generated occasionally from a poysonous stupefactive and mortified beginning of matter fore-conceived in the Midriffs The which when it hath in the same place attained its perfection and requisite maturity it infects the Archeus of the place which presently for that very cause vanquisheth and sore troubleth the powers of the Brain but not that the Brain doth primarily labour and draw the parts put under it into the conspiracy of its own Death But that the Palsie is a Contracture of the sensitive parts caused by Terrour alone But that thing is manifest in particular resolvings of the members To wit wherein the local Generations of the aforesaid Apoplectical poyson are made Furthermore the Schooles have made mention of one onely Anodynous poyson which is sleepisying stupefactive and distinguished onely in degree between Opium Mandrake and Henbane not that they therefore deny although they pass by many others in Simples For there are some which in a small space of duration do take away Sense and the health of the Mind Motion being left even as in affects of the Falling sicknesse Some do overshadow or Eclipse the Motion onely others both and very many also do befool Sense and Motion being left Neither therefore are they to be named even as neither others which are bedrunkening ones But besides the humour that is to be assimilated unto us is easily infected from the Image of a mortal Anodynous poyson of the Archeus conceived in the Midriffs wherewith a various condition of poyson is co-bred for Company and is frequently beheld in the Plague But elsewhere it strikes not the head but is sealed in the habit of the body where also now and then the freezing poyson of the Leprosie is bred by the same priviledge of degenerating But a stupefactive poyson in the Duumvirate violently dejects the Brain and according to its difference generates giddiness the Falling-Evil Heart-beatings Swoonings Catochus's and the Apoplexy and as fears of the parts so also Palseys accompany this Apoplexy But out of the Duumvirate it mortisies its Seat with an astonishment and a cold Gangreen c. They therefore notably err who are busied in restraining madness by Opiates seeing every Opiate is in it self mad because madness is nothing besides a waking Dream For truly scarce a ten-fold Dose of Opium procures sleep to a mad person but in a lesser Dose nothing is effected But if indeed through increasing of the Dose sleep creepes on the mad person it shall now increase the waking sleep and divers unlike vanities of vain Dreames But sleep coming on a mad man of its own free accord hath deceived the Schooles For that as it proceedes from a good cause so also as a fore-running Betokener of health it promiseth that the madnesse will be solved Add thou that in Opium besides a sleepifying there is another poyson connexed whence deadly Poppies for sleep are much sung of by Poets But in the sulphur of Vitriol there is a Sugary sleepifying Being which brings on sweet sleep together with a restoring of the principal Faculties There is the like in Sulphur for which things sake it is commended in affects of the Lungs if it be so prepared as that it may be able to play together with us Sleep that brings labour or trouble such as is from Opiates is evil Which poyson denotas sore disturbances and Tempests Therefore sweet sleep creeping on the party is to be dedicated unto favourable Causes Therefore I will say it again the Apoplexy Falling-sickness Coma or sleeping-Evil giddiness of the Head trembling of the Heart c. have their own singular and those anodynous poysons The Veâ—tigo indeed doth sometimes prostrate a man like the Apoplexy but without a Palsie Because it hath not a Cadaverous stupefactive poyson but a be drunkening one such as is in Tobacco But if it shall become the more hurtfull in degree number or quantity it is also made apoplectical But moreover concerning Garlick and Aqua vitae I have spoken and of the unsensibleness thereof yet it is not apoplectical because a poyson and constant Root is absent At least by way of impertinency I will add to this That Anodynous things although they stupifie like cold yet that they are erroneously placed by the Schooles among things that are cold in the highest degree And moreover neither is the sleepifying sulphur in Opium cold but it is exceeding bitter and the salt thereof is sharp and Sudoriferous But bitter things in the Schooles are notably Hot. Therefore the sleepifying matter as well in Opium as elsewhere is a power and specifical Gift of the Creatour but not an effect of Cold Even as I have elsewhere profesly manifested concerning sleep But the stupefactive poyson in the Epilepsie differs from an Apoplectical one because in the chief part of it it is a be-drunkening one Spare me Reader for that I denominate the faculties of things from the similitude of Simples for truly proper Names are waning as also the knowledge of Properties from a former Cause which ought to dictate Names After the Treatises of unsensibility of Anodinous things and of some poysons pain is to be re-sumed by me I repeat therefore That pain and sense are made immediately in an injured place or Center a consent of the Brain being not required For it is sufficient that the vital Light of the sensitive Soul it self is diffused into all parts on every side according to the requirance of necessity For any Ruler of parts ought also to be a Noter and Discerner of Objects Because it hath the Soul on every side present with and President over it For after what sort shall the Soul manifest that it feeles things hurtfull unlesse it shall
stir up a pain or averseness from thence conceived in its injured Center The Spirits therefore inserted in the Joynts ought readily to serve the necessities of the Members without consultation and recourse had unto the Brain seeing not the Brain but the Soul it self being every where present doth immediately feel For there was need of excessive swiftness for the averting and preventing of hurtfull things therefore to send a Messenger unto the Brâ—in had been inconvenient I grant indeed that the pain of the Intestine drawes other parts into a consent and resolves them either with a stubborn Palsie or contracts the parts serving for voluntary motion that the Kidney being pained the stomach is nauseous and begins to vomit the Bowels are writhed and the Thigh placed under it is astonied That the Nail of ones Hand paining stirs up a remote kernel For truly the presence of the Soul confirmeth but doth not take away a consent of parts Therefore that consent in paines is forreign unto pain and by accident neither therefore doth it touch at or estrange the essence or cause of pain Because that Consent is latter unto pain and therefore also separable from it Therefore all the particular Spirits of the parts do feel without the commerce of the inflowing Spirit As in the Teeth and in new flesh being restored in a hollow Ulcer For because the parts do on both sides live in their own quarter Sense is according to the diversities of the Organ and therefore there are many paines con-centred in Seasons and they answer unto the unequalities of the Moon because they are centrally received in the Spirit which is Astral unto us Again Neither the venal bloud nor the very bloud of the Arteries are strong in Sense and an animal Touching although they being even hunted out of the Vessels do Sympathetically feel because they flourish onely with influous Spirit Therefore it hath been hitherto questioned by Divines whether the venal bloud be informed by the Soul I suppose therefore under the Correction of a better Judgement That nothing is informed by the Soulof a living Creature which doth not partake of the sensitive Soul that is that nothing is informed by the Soul which doth not feel by the Spirit implanted and quickned in the parts Because informing argues of necessity life in the living Creature as also Life argues a sense or feeling at least a dull one such as is in the Bones and Brain But if indeed meates in the stomach an abounding of Seed in the seedy Kernels Hunger yea and the Urine do produce their own dreams in the Soul and stir up the Soul under sleep according to their pleasure Yet it followes not from thence on the other hand That therefore the Soul informeth the food or the urine For although the Soul shall feel urine abounding and pressing it yet this urine doth not feel its own Objects For the Soul also feels a pricking Knife the which notwithstanding it doth not inform That therefore any thing may be informed by the Soul it is necessary that it lives and feels as it were the subject of the life it self Sense therefore and pain are in the parts or things conteining subjectively but in those conteined objectively onely Yea although things conteined are intimate with us and after a most near manner vital yet in respect of their being things conteined and of the sensitive Soul they are as it were external Notwithstanding it is not sufficient to have said with the vulgar That a hurtful cause is painful yea nor is it sufficient to know that the Sensitive Liâ—e doth primarily feel and from thence the spirit implanted in the parts and at length the stable Organs and so indeed that the Sense testifies of the presence of that which is hurtful seeing these things the Schools and the common people have after some sort known But it ought more manifestly to appear what may immediately cause pain and after what sort Pain may be made in feeling As to the first a Needle pricks and from thence is pain A litte Bee stings and wounds like a Needle But both of them do pain after a far different manner Therefore the solution or dividing of that which held together it self otherwise common in both prickings doth not primarily cause pain For truly the dividing or that which held together effects no other thing in respect of it self than a Non-solution The which in leprous affects and in the Palsey is without Sense and Pain But if indeed the solution of the Con-tinual causeth pain or doth not that is to the knife by accident neither doth this touch at the Solution primarily except in the condition of an occasion without which it is not therefore because the stinging of a Bee causeth another manner of pain than an equal solution that is made by a Needle surely it dependeth on a more piercing judgement of Sense or Feeling And so it is even from thence presently manifest that the Sensitive Soul it self doth immediately feel censure and judge of the Object of Pain But Sense in the Schools is said to be made passively even as motion actively But I have already shewn that Sense is made by a power or by a primary sensitive Being through action Although the Members do suffer subjectively through the application of sensible Objects Therefore Sense or Feeling is made actively because the Act of feeling it self is an active censure of the Soul But in as much in the mean time as the members do suffer seeing that is unto the act of feeling by accident it cannot hinder but that feeling is made sensitively There is indeed the same proper agent in that sensitive action of Sense and Pain because the Agent it self is the Soul And Sense or Feeling differs from pain by the judgement of the Soul concerning sensible Objects And so Sense is of the Soul it self to wit its action but not its passion The Schools indeed have known with the common people that violent causes do bring on Pain even as also that the water is liquid But to have shewn the internal animosity or courage of the sensitive faculty and to have manifested pain in the root that they have not yet hitherto been intent upon To which end the following consideration doth conduce Live flesh is most easily scorched and is excoriated or flead by boyling water But dead flesh is the more slowly burnt And there is a different scorching if a live hand and that of a dead Carcase be burnt For truly the former burning stirrs up bladders with the least fervency of heat so as that the same happens even under the Sun But the latter burning parcheth the flesh no otherwise than if it were roasted namely without little bladders and excoriation The Schools also have not yet registred that difference because neither have they heeded it And perhaps they will say that it is more easie to make hot things already heated and that therefore live flesh is the more
the scope of pain Because they are onely abstracted Names and for the most part not in the least point conteining the cause thereof even as I have demonstrated in the Treatise concerning Diseasifying Causes as it were in the combating place of exercise For in the Urine-pipes for an Example in the tearms of the Disease of the Stone there is no necessity dependency of Dominion Clients-ship Usurpation Possession Custome and no community of the Pipes and Excrements with the bowels or stomach For if when the left side of the Throat is in pain not so much as the right side thereof in such an angiport or narrow passage be now and then afflicted why shall we not deservedly suspect the nearness and dependency of parts which are unlike and differing in the Ordination of their Offices and Scituation It is therefore sufficient hitherto that all pain the author of a Convulsion or Contracture presupposeth a hatefull Guest For there are also unpainfull Contractures as before concerning the Cod and the which draw their original not so much from pain as from meer trouble But painfull Convulsions are made from Hostile Causes For so Those things cause paine which smite the Spirit called for the Soul Sensitive with sharpness brackishness or degrees of heat or cold But the most intense pain is from fire and then from Alcalies and corroding things because they are the nearest to fire after that from austere or harsh brackish and four things because they are the nearest to Contracture Presently after from salt things then next from sharp things and lastly from some bitter things But from poysons as such cruel pain ariseth the which in the Plague is ordinary and because so great pain oft-times ariseth without sharpness a Truth is denoted To wit That pain issues from the judgement of the Sensitive Soul For Corrosives since they gnaw the sensitive Soul it self they wast the parts themselves like fire But Alume Vitriol Aqua Fortes's next the juyce of unâ—ipe Grapes and also any sharp things as they do by themselves crisp and pull together the Fibers of the Organs therefore such Excrements are Convulsory and painfull There are also Alcalies which sleepifie paines To wit in Cases where they break the greatest sharpnesses of Putrefactions For under the Dog-star while as Fleshes threaten corruption at hand the Broaths of fleshes are made sharp with an ungratefull savour whence in the Gout Colick and gnawing and putrifying Ulcers I conceived paines to proceed at first from a sharpness Likewise the sensitive Soul at first feeles pain the which being at length accustomed waxeth the less wroth even so as an accustomed Horse refuseth Sâ—urs For Nature in her self is wholly furious and Sumptomatical and being by degrees accustomed to paines waxeth mild Wherefore Self-love and Revenge are before or more antient than sense or feeling because they are intimately in Seeds in the bosome of Nature before Sense For the Characters or Images of anger agony fear revenge and sorrow do bring forth Convulsions like to those their own Idea's For from the knowledge whereby a Mouse abhors a Cat not before seen the Spirit being provoked is stirred up into anger fear c. The which by its own Idea uttereth its fury on the members as it were by a Brand. 1. The hand waxeth cold because the heat there cherished by the Life is extinguished by cold but not that the vital Spirit retires inward as having left the arterial bloud whch it had married and much less that heat as a naked quality passeth departeth and returneth inward as it were in a Comedy 2. The heat being now diminished cold also persisting the cold waxeth strong and then Sense in the hand is stupified For the sensitive abstracted Spirits are pressed together To wit those which are in the sinewes but not those which are in the Arteries because the Spirit hath the more firmly married the arterial Bloud and it is the property of the Veines even after death to preserve the Bloud from Con-cretion or Coagulation For the vital Spirit is sustained from behind by the fewel or cherishing warmth of the heart as much as may be and therefore in that stupefaction Life is as yet deteined 3. Motion languisheth in the Hand because the Spirits being grown together in the flesh seeing they are not sufficiently nourished from behind by the heart they by degrees perish and by degrees are altered 4. And then together with the perishing of Motion Sense also is extinguished To wit while the Bloud being chased out of the Veines threatens a clotting Life as yet remaining 5. And so at length the joynts are by cold totally deprived of Life To wit when as the venal bloud hath now departed into Clots and dyed Therefore in the third and fourth degree aforesaid pain springs up in the Hand being heated For as the Heart inspires a new sensitive Spirit from behind the which while it takes notice of death to be readily at hand it being as it were enraged in the same place presently frames the Idea of its own indignation and so puts off its native sweetness or Complacency Even as in the Treatise concerning diseasie Idea's in the work concerning the Rise or Original of Medicine I will more clearly demonstrate So the sensitive Spirit which was not trampled on by cold but repulsed by pressing together in its return stirs up another Idea of its own indignation and another pain as it were like that of the pricking of a pin Let the Reader in the mean time pardon me in that I ought to borrow the Name of an Icy or freezing Poyson without the necessity of fore-going Cold For I call not that an Icy poyson as if it were made cold as I have already spoken concerning the stupefying astonishment of the Hands but I call it a cooling and also a stupefying poyson and that which takes away sense and motion Therefore the similitude of the Name draws its Original not from the Root but from the Effect And last of all in this By-work for a Conclusion of this Work and Sensation Let us meditate at least of the Remedies of Physitians in the Apoplexy in astonishment or beâ—ummedness giddiness of the Head in the Catalepsie Catochus Coma Convulsions plucking of the Eyelids Eyes Tongue and Lips For thou shalt find that presently cutting of a vein and a Clyster are prescribed They doubting in the mean time Whether the dung of the Fundament may pluck the Tongue and Lips in the mouth may likewise stamp drowsinesses and astonishment in the sick As it hath brought forth blockishnesses and neglect in the Physitian Or indeed whether these arise from the venal bloud therefore they are presently intent upon both at once And then on the day following they administer purging things And thirdly as being full of uncertainty after Rubbings they provoke Sweats For their Succours are universal because others are wanting and they are ignorant of such And therefore their total usual Medicines are general
grieved Wherefore sympathy and antipathy are observed to be even in stones but in the Load-stone most manifestly the which notwithstanding cannot consist without a sense or feeling But wheresoever that sense is although it be dull it happens also that some shew of imagination agreeable to its subject doth accompany it For otherwise it is altogether impossible for any thing to love desire attract and apply that which is consonant to it self or to shun any thing adverse to it self unless a certain sense knowledge desire of and averâ—eness from the object are reciprocally present All which things do enclose in them an obscure act of feeling imagination and certain image of choice For else by what means shall a thing be moved or altered at the presence of its object unlesse it feel or percieve that very object to be present with it self If it perceive how shall it be altered except under a conception of the passion felt by it self And unlesse that felt conception doth include some certain imagination in it self Take notice Reader that in this corner all the abstruse knowledge of occult or hidden properties layeth which the Schools have banished from their diligent search they desisting from whence they were to begin according to that Maxim A Phylosopher must begin where nature ends I have therefore deliberated more exactly to demonstrate that in inanimate things â—here inhabiteth a kind of sense phantasie yea and of choice yet in a proportionable respect according to the capacity and degree of every one I do not in the mean time make mention of Zoophytes or Plant-Animals which remote absence of proving might unto many seem to be ridiculous But our paradox will offend none who moderatly understands it First of all it is not to be doubted but that some flowers do accompany the Sun as well in cleer days in those wherein the Sun doth not shine as in nights themselves they attesting that they have a motion sense and love of the Sun because without which it is impossible for them to accompany the hidden Sun For even as late in the evening they loose the Sun in the West the which while he hastens towards the East doth not operate amongst us who abide in the shadow of the earth yet in the mean time whether the night be hot be cold be cleer or rainy the flowers notwithstanding do not cease equally to bend themselves towards the east Which thing first of all poynts out that there is in them a knowledge of the rising and circuite of the Sun in what part he is to set and in what to rise cal thou it the instinct of nature or as it listeth thee For names will not change the matter the matter it self is of a deed done but the deed hath its cause in the flower But that these things do thus happen in plants vegetatively enlivened it is the lesse wonder But that they have place also in Minerals I thus prove There is almost nothing made in nature without a proper motion and nothing is moved voluntarily or by it self but by reason of the property put into it by the Creator which property the Antients name a proper love and for this cause they will have self-love to be the first born daughter of nature given unto it and bred in it for its own preservation And when this is present there is of necessity also a Sympathy and Antipathy in respect of the diversity of objects For so the feathers of other birds are said to undergo rottennesse by the feathers or wings of an Eagle and cloath made of the wools of sheep that died of their own accord is soon of its own accord in the holes which are beaten thorow it resolved as it were with rottennesse in what places the threds of the dead wool run down So a drum made of a sheep and asses skin is dumb if a neighbouring drum made of the hide of a wolf be beaten The skin of a Gulo it is a most devouring creature in Swethland stirs up in a man however sober he be and not a hunter the ordinary sleeps from hunting and eating if the party sleeping be covered with the same But what are these things to minerals Truly I proceed from the vegetable kingdom through dead things by degrees unto stones whereunto the holy Scriptures attribute great virtue For indeed stones could neither move nor alter if they had not an act of feeling of their own object For neither could red Coral wax pale if being born about it shall touch the flesh of a menstruous woman unlesse it self felt the defects thereof For the Load-stone bewrays it self as the most manifest of stones which by a proper local motion inclines it self to the North as if it were vital But not that it is drawn by the north Because if a Load-stone be placed toward the north in a woodden box in the averse part of it upon the face of a standing pool of water the box with the other and opposite corner of the stone speedily as may be rowls it self to the North Therefore if that should be done by a drawing of the north and not by a voluntary impulsive motion of the Load-stone it self the box should in like manner presently also by the same attraction yield it self unto the north bank The which notwithstanding comes not to passe but the box together with its stone remains unmoved after that the stone together with the box hath retorted it self on the requisite side and by a requisite motion It is clear therefore that the Load-stone doth of its own free accord rowl it self to the North From whence afterwards it followes that there is in it a sense knowledge and desire unto the north and also the beginning of a conformable motion Furthermore if any one doth hold a polished piece of steel nighâ— the aforesaid box toward the South-side the Load-stone then forthwith neglects the north and turns it self to the steel so that the box not only turns it self to the steel but that it wholly also swims toward the north whence also it is plain to be seen that the Load-stone is carried with a stronger appetite to the iron than to the North and that the steel hath lesse of a successive alteration in it than the North Consequently also it is manifest that it is strong in a manifest choice of objects Some have moved a frivolous doubt about this matter To wit whether the Load stone draws the iron or indeed the iron drawes the Load-stone it self As not knowing that there is a mutual attraction on both sides which comes not by little and little by reason of much familiarity neither doth it keep respects not observe the ends of its own gain fruition circumstances or consequence Neither is that drawing subject to a flatterer oâ— defamer out it is a gift originally inbred by nature in the Archeusses on either part and marked with a proprietary character by him who made all things so that indeed if
the steel be lighter than the Load-stone it is drawn to the Loadstone but otherwise if the stone be lighter than the steel Because the drawing is not in the one and the obedience of the drawing in the other but there is one only mutual inclinative drawing and not of the drawer with a skirmishing of the resister And so from hence it is manifest that a desire is in nature before the drawing and that the drawing followes the desire as some latter thing as the effect doth its cause If therefore according to the testimony of truth all things are to be discerned by their works and the fruits do bewray their own tree truly such attractive inclinations cannot subsist without the testimony of a certain co-participated life sensation knowledge and election Moreover neither is the life of minerals lesse than the life of vegetables distinguished from the animal life by their own life and their generations among themselves Because that which is vegetable and that which is mineral do not operate but one or a few proper things and the same things as yet with a precisenesse interchangeable course property inclination and necessity as oft as a proper object is present with them but a living creature operates many things and those neither constrainedly as neither by accident of the object but altogether by desire well pleasing appetite will and choice of some certain deliberation Seeing the first operation of the same is life but the second a proper appetite desire or love or delight At length thirdly there is a deliberative and distinctive choice of objects So I have seen a Bull that was filled with lust to have dâ—spised an old Cow but an heifer being offered him to have again presently after wantâ—nized But the first operation of things obscurely living is a power unto a seminal essentialnesse Next the second is an exercise of powers and properties At length the third operation is a greater and lesse inclination motion and knowledge The which indeed flow not from a deliberative election or choice but from a potestative interchangeable course strangenesse likenesse appropriation purity or unaptnesse of objects wherefore it was a right opinion of the Antients that all things are in all after the manner of the receiver But those powers by reason of their undiscerned obscurity and the sloath of diligent searchers have been scarce believed but by predecessours and moderns were not considered and by reason of the difficulties of accesse they have circumvented the world with a wandring despaire and with the name of occult properties have hood-winkt themselves by their own sluggishnesse But my scope in this place hath been that if in Herbs and Minerals there are such kind of notions the Authoresses and moderatresses of hidden properties the same by a far more potent reason and after a more plentiful manner do inhabite in flesh and blood To wit excellently with a particular and affected notion motion inclination appetite love interchangeable course hostility and resistance as with that which occurs in us through the service of the five senses Even so that in flesh and blood there is a certain seminal notion distinction imagination of love conveniency likenesse and also of fear terror sorrow resistance c. with a beholding of gain and losse offence and complacency of superiority I say and inferiority and so of the agent and the patient Because those necessary dependances of a consequent necessity do flow from and accompany the aforesaid sensations or acts of feeling The which surely in the vital blood are characterized in a higher degree by reason of the inbred Archeus the Author and workman of any of these passions whatsoever than otherwise in the whole kind that is not soulified or quickned For a tooth from a dead carcase that dyed by the extinguishment of its powers constraineth any tooth of a living man to wither and fall out only by its touching because it compels it to be despised by the life The which a tooth from a dead carcase slain by a violent death or presently extinguished by a sharp disease doth not likewise perform In like manner the hair of a dead carcass whose life was taken away by degrees by a voluntary death makes persons bauld only by its touching Watts and brands brought on the Young by the perturbation of a woman great with child through the touching of a dead carcase that died of its own accord and by degrees untill part of the branded mark shall wax more inwardly cold the mark also doth by degrees voluntarily vanish away Observe well with me whether these are not the testimonies of another act of feeling than that of cold Moreover whether in that same sensation there be not a natural knowledge and fear of death connexed which things are as yet also in the dead carcass For truly a Tetanus or straight extension of a dead carcase or stiffnesse thereof is not a certain congelation of cold But a mear convulsion of the muscles abhorring death and living even after the departure of the soul For from hence the dead carcases of those who die by a violent death because they die the faculties of their flesh being not altogether extinguished they feel not the aforesaid Tetanus but a good while after CHAP. X. A living creature imaginative I Have said that Herbs and Minerals do imagine by a certain instinct of nature that is after their own manner so in the next place that the blood and mummie have certain native conceptions in order and likenesse unto man which things that they may be directed unto our purpose concerning the Plague thou mayest remember after what sort the perturbations of a woman great with child her hand being applied unto some certain member although unadvisedly rashly and without a concurrence of the will do decipher the member in the Young co-agreeing in co-touching with the image of the object of that perturbation with the image I say but not with an idle signature But suppose thou that her desire was to a cherry verily a cherry is deciphered in the young and in a co-like member such as the child-bearing woman shall touch with her hand which cherry waxeth green yellow and red every year at the same stations wherein the cherries of a tree do attain those interchanges of colours And which is far more wonderful it hath happened that the Young so marked hath suffered these signatures of colours in the Low-countries in the moneths called May and June which afterwards expressed the same in Spain in those called March and April And at length the Young returning into his countrie shewed them again in a bravery in those called May and June Also under a strong impression of a woman great with child not onely a new generation of a cherry is brought in thereupon but it also happens that the old one is to be changed and it constrains a seminal generation to give place yea and the image of God being now lively or in the readinesse
breaths And the air being once drunk in he at length undergoes the laws of death and diminishment For before he breathed he lived onely and that by his own Archeus Almost all other created things do putrifie in a rock But the Toad is nourished and grows to maturity in a fermental putrified liquour within a rock or great stone From hence also it is conjectured that he is an Animal ordained of God that the Idea of his terrour being poysonous indeed to himself should be unto us and to our Pest a poyson in terrour For as it is sufficiently manifest from the aforesaid particulars that the Toad is most disagreeable unto our co-tempering and suiting so the Idea of terrour in the Toad is exceeding pestilential to the pestiferous terrour it self in us Since therefore the Toad is an Insect most fearful at the beholding of man which in himself notwithstanding forms the terrour conceived from man and also the hatred against man into an image or active real Being and not subsisting in an only and conâ—used apprehension even as hath already before been nakedly demonstrated concerning the Idea's of a woman great with child and likewise of a mad dog c. Hence it happens that a poyson ariseth from a Toad which kills the pestilent poyson of terrour in man to wit from whence the Archeus waxeth strong he not onely perceiving the pestilent Idea to be extinguished in himself but moreover because he knoweth that something inferiour to himself is terrified is sore affraid and doth flie For so in every war and duel from an evident dread of the enemy a hostile courage is strengthened But so great is the fear of the Toad that if he being placed with a direct beholding before thee thou dost behold him with intent eyes or an earnest look for some time for the space of a quarter of an hour that he cannot avoid it he dies through terrour The Toad therefore being slain after the manner of Paracelsus he dying without terrour is an unworthy Zenexton The Archeus therefore his courage being re-assumed casts away dread most especially when as he well perceives the bred poyson of his own terrour to be killed For a Zenexâ—on acts not after the manner of other agents no otherwise then as the poyson of the plague is altogether an unwonted poyson Neither doth a Zenexton act materially but the action of the same is spiritual and altogether sympathetical For truly the co-resemblance of activity wherein the reason of founding a Sympathy consisteth is in the poyson of terrour conceived as well in the Pest as in the Toad But even as the poyson of the Plague is irregular having nothing common with other poysons so also a Zenexton being exorbitant or rising high in the activity of a strange and forreign terrour is a manifest poyson to the pestilent image of our terrour together with a refreshment confirmation strength and resurrection of the Archeus which activity of a preservative amuleâ— surely the Schools could not contemplate of because they have not been able to contemplate that that of Aristotle not onely in the plague but also in other poysons is false Indeed the action of a Zenexton is from the victory of the Patient over the agent for thou shalt remember that the terrour and hatred in the Toad from man the agent overcomming indeed but in no wise operating are made imprinted actuated agents and those brought into a degree by the proper conception of the Toad which in the aforesaid Idea are as it were fugitive living creatures and therefore they restore the terrified Archeus of man and kill the image of the poysonous terrour Truly in single combats that are spiritual there is altogether a far different contention from that which is wont to be by appropriated corporal agents The which I have elsewhere demonstrated in removing the activities of contrarieties from the properties of nature A Zenexton therefore is of a magnetick or attractive nature to wit acting onely on a proper object while it meets with it within the sphere of its own activity It might seem a doubt to some why the image of hatred in the Toad is a remedy but why the image of hatred in a mad dog is a poyson the reason is in the adjoyned Idea of terrour in the Toad which brings forth an inferiority of poyson For the one exceeds the other in the sturdinesse of conceptions and therefore also of images For a mad dog is bold rash and his sealed image enforceth its obedience For neither is he mad forasmuch as he feareth but he feareth water as he hates living creatures But the Toad is an Animal that is most afraid of us and as from his inbred hatred towards us he is badly conscious to himself divine clemency so disposing it So the images of those conceptions mutually piercing each other and accompanying each other do confer a mark of the greatest pusillanimity or cowardise dipt in the venome of hatred Hence indeed the image of the pestilent terrour is killed by the image of the deadly hatred and our Archeus is beheld by the image of the cowardly terrour through the application of the preservative Pomander as it were in a glasse and doth well nigh reassume the superiority which before he had lost And therefore the Idea of terrour in the Toad hates and also the image of hatred terrifies the Toad from whence he puts on a poyson for our terror To wit by both means he kills the image of pestilent terrour in the Archeus There is indeed in spiritual things a primitive self-love seeing that every original single duel of sensitive creatures issueth not but from premediated conceptions but the Idea of every ones conceipt is formed in the imagination and puts on an Entity or Beingnesse for to do somewhat for the future For as the images of motions to be made do end into motions so also the images of the Senses are carried first inwards for further deliberations of counsels and they soon there degenerate into the images or likenesses of apprehensions passions or disturbances and from thence they are carried to do something in the body or out of it and they slide and grow according to the directions and inclinations of passions In this respect indeed such images do limit the vital spirits or the very operative part of the bowels according to an impression proper to themselves which thing most cleerly manifests it self in the poyson of a mad dog who if he were afraid of us as he is afraid of water would not do us violence neither would his biting be venemous unto us For the Spider Scorption c. are wrathful little Animals and the which if the strike us they lay up they anger of their own poyson in us or rather the poyson of their anger A certain hand-maid now and then are spiders not only the party-coloured ones of the Vine but also those black ones out of Caves and moist places and lived in health thereupon