the Soul as the Body is by all Philosophers granted to be formed of the seminal matter and because otherwise Brutes cannot be properly said to generate their like in Specie and by consequence the Power to that end entailed upon them by the first and universal command of God increscite ac multiplicamini would be rendr'd of no effect I farther suppose that this Embryon Soul after this manner newly formed or as it were kindled is dayly augmented by accession and assimilation of like Particles as the Body is augmented out of the grosser and less fugitive Parts of the Aliment till both Soul and Body have attain'd to the standard of Maturity or perfection of growth thenceforth slowly declining in Vigor by degrees answerable to those of their ascent till they arrive at their final Period Death which dissolving the system or contexture of the Soul leaves the Particles of which it was composed to fly away and vanish into Aire and the Body to be resolved into its first Principles by slower corruption For Nutrition and Augmentation are as yesterday I proved Operations of the Plastic Virtue continually reforming the whole Animal and the duration or subsistence of the Soul is the Vinculum of the whole composition or concretion So that the Soul may be by an apposite Metaphor called the Salt or Condiment that preserves the fleshy parts of the Body from putrefaction as the Spirits of Wine preserve the whole Mass of Liquor through which they are diffused from losing its Vigor and generose quality and according to that oraculous saying of Hippocrates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Soul is always generated anew till Death Which very thing is argument enough to evince that if it be not really a most thin Flame finer and more gentle than that arising from the purest Spirit of Wine burning within a paper Lantern it is at least very like to Flame For as this so that is every moment regenerated at once perishing and reviving perishing by continual dissipation of some Particles and reviving by continual accension of others out of its proper aliment the more subtile and sulphureous Particles of the Blood serving to repair the decays of the Soul as the grosser Particles of the succus nutritius are convenient to recruit the exhausted substance of the Body So that it was not without reason that Democritus Epicurus Lucretius and Hippocrates among the Antients and among the Moderns Fernelius Heurnius Cartesius Hogelandus Honoratus Faber and Dr. Willis held the Soul of a Brute to be of a firy substance and that Aristotle himself called it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that the Ld. Chancellor Bacon natural Hist. centur 7. makes one of the two radical differences between Plants and Animals to consist in this that the Spirits of living Creatures hold more of Flame Finally I conceive that this sensitive Soul however it be a thing mixt or composed of Particles among themselves in Magnitude Figure Position and Motion somwhat various is notwithstanding by admirable Artifice so constituted and the parts of it so contemperate and context that it is made one most thin and yet continued and coherent substance diffused through the whole Body Nor can its component Particles while it subsists in the Body be dissociated otherwise than by their own evolation which is instantly supplied by the accession and unition of others no more than the natural smell colour or tast can be separated from an Apple Peach or any other Fruit. This universal diffusion of it through the Body is what the Ld. Chancellor Bacon calls Branching of the Spirits in Nat. Hist. Cent. 7. Paragraph 1 where he saith the Spirits of things Animate are all continued with themselves and branched in Veins and secret Canales as Blood is and what Dr. Willis calls Coextension of the Soul to all parts of the Body Granting then that this most thin continued and diffused Substance is conteined in the Body and as it were coherent with the same thereby sustained and bounded we may with the more probability conceive that it is to the Body the cause of all the Faculties Actions Passions and Motions belonging to its Nature as the Organ of such a Soul that it keeps the Body together at once both conserving actuating managing and governing it and that it can be no more separated from the Body without the dissolution thereof than the Odor can be separated from Frankincense without destroying the nature of it And this I think sufficient to explain what I conceive of the first quaestion proposed viz. of what Substance the Soul of a Brute is and of what Particles composed As to the Second viz. wherein the Life of such a Soul doth consist it seems to me probable that since Life according to the general notion of it is nothing but Usura quaedam vigoris mobilitatisque facultatum activarum ejus rei cui inest the Life of a sensitive Soul is immediately founded in a certain Motion of the active and spirituose Particles of which it is composed as the Life of an Animal consisteth in the continuation of the same determinate Motion of those Spirits by which it was at first kindled and of the actual exercise of the Faculties that emerge or result from the union of the Soul with its Body by the Fabrick of the various Organs thereof adapted to perform all the various Functions Offices and Actions requisite to consummate the nature of such an Animal in Specie What kind of Motion that is in which as in its Origine I conceive this Life to be founded I shall by and by declare when I come to enquire what is the immediate Subject or Seat of Life having first endeavor'd to solve the Third Question proposed viz. what are the principal Faculties and Operations of a sensitive Soul These then are as ye well know all comprehended in Life Sense and motion Animal of which I shall here consider only the Second reserving the First till by and by and the Last till the Clew of my method hath brought me to treat of it in its proper place As to the Faculty of Sense therefore which constitutes the chief difference between living Creatures and things inanimate which Lucretius elegantly call's animam ipsius animae and the extinction or total privation of which is Death since I have supposed a sensitive Soul to be Material or Corporeal I must seek for this noble Power whereby she is qualified not only to perceive external Objects but to be also conscious of all her Perceptions in Matter after a certain peculiar manner so or so disposed or modified and in nothing else lest I recede from that supposition But in what matter is it most likely to be found whatsoever the determinate modification requisite to create such a Power shall at length be imagined to be in the Matter of the Soul herself or in that of the Body she animates Truly if we distinctly examine either the Soul or Body of a Brute as
and deep Vallies where it is kept in on both sides and wheel'd about into eddies or Whirle-Winds 5 In the very manner of Ustion or burning which is always transacted through the minute Pores of the Body burnt so that Ustion doth always undermine and penetrate and prick as if it were done by the points of a great many Needles Thence it seems to come also that Aqua Fortis Chrysulca and other dissolving Liquors if proportionate to the Body on which they act do the work of Fire by their penetrating pungent and corroding Motions PROPOS IV. That this expansive repuls'd alternative and penetrating Motion requisite to the generation of Heat ought to be also rapid and to be made by Particles minute indeed but not reduced to extreme subtilty THe verity of this proposition may be collected 1 From a comparation of the works of Fire with the works of Time or Age. For Age dries consumes undermines and incinerates no less than Fire yea far more subtilly but because the motion that causes these effects is both very slow and performed by Particles extremely minute therefore no sensible Heat is thereby produced 2 from comparing the dissolution of Gold with that of Iron the first in Aqua Regis the other in Aqua Fortis For Gold is dissolved calmly without tumult or effervescence raised in the dissolvent Iron not without vehement excitation of Heat probably because in Gold the ingress of the Water of Separation is slow mild and subtilly insinuating and the yeilding of the parts of the Gold easy but in Iron the ingress is rough difficult and with conflict the parts of the Iron with greater obstinacy resisting the motion of the dissolvent 3 From Gangrens and Mortifications which invade and spread without inducing much either of heat or pain by reason the motion of putrefaction is both slow and performed by Particles extremely subtil otherwise it would certainly cause Pain in the part affected Now from these Propositions the three latter of which are certain necessary Limitations of the first we may deduce this genuine conclusion That Heat is a certain Motion expansive checkt or repuls'd striving quickned or incited by opposition perform'd by minute Particles and with conflict and some impetuosity Which to me I declare seems to be so perspicuous and convincing that I dare promise that if any man be able to excite a Motion tending to dilatation or expansion of the Movent and then to repress that motion so as the dilatation may not proceed equally and uniformly but prevail and be repulsed alternately he shall thereby most certainly generate Heat in the Body whose parts are so moved of what kind or constitution soever the Body shall be For whether it be a Body Elementary as they speak or luminose or opaque rare or dense locally expansed or contein'd within the bounds of its first dimensions tending to dissolution or remaining in its stare whether it be Animal Vegetable or Mineral Water or Oyl or Aire or any other substance susceptive of the Motion described it will make no difference as to the effect aimed at the production of actual Heat Why then should I not believe that Nature hath instituted such an actual Motion or Heat in the Blood of Animals that Life Original might be therein perpetually generated since to make that actual Heat also Vital nothing more is required as I said before but that it arise from an internal Principle or Mover viz. the vital Spirits ingenite in the Blood and that it be amicable benign and placid as in the State of Health it always is and since both those requisite conditions or qualifications are found in the motion of the Blood If in the assertion of the precedent Propositions or in the deduction of my conclusion from them I have from weakness of Judgment admitted any Paralogism I shall receive the discovery thereof as a singular favor from any man of greater perspicacity and more skilful in the art of reasoning rightly and will ingenuously acknowledg and retract my error Meanwhile I acquiesce in this perswasion that the vital Heat of Animals is an expansive Motion of the Spirits of the Blood somewhat checkt or repulsed but still endevoring with sufficient force and alternately prevailing which I owe partly to the Ld. Chancellor Bacon in novo Organo ubi agit de praerogativis instantiarum in vindemiatione 1. partly to his equal sectator Dr. Glisson who had the felicity to improve whatsoever he had borrowed and to raise illustrous Theories from obscure hints But hold a little and give me space to reflect upon what I have lately said Have I not in this place incurred the danger of being accused of contradicting myself 'T is not half an Hour since I declared my assent to that common Doctrine of all Theologs and most Philosophers that the Life of a Man doth originally spring from and perpetually depend upon the union of his rational Soul with his Body And now I affirm that the Life of all Animals Man himself not excepted consists in the expansive motion of the Spirits in their Blood Are not these two assertions to be numbred among 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 things inconsistent yea manifestly repugnant each to the other If either of them be true is not the other necessarily false To obviate this formidable accusation I say that these two positions though seemingly opposite are yet really capable of reconciliation each to the other and by consequence both may be true For 1 well known it is to all versed in the Jewish Commentaries upon the Pentateuch that the most learned Rabbins interpreting these words in the History of Mans Creation Deus inspiravit in faciem hominis spiraculum vitae to shew the excellency of Man above all his fellow Creatures give this Paraphrase upon them Homini Deus in creatione imaginem suam indidit inspiravit halitum vitae duplicis mortalis immortalis So that according to the Sense of this Paraphrase at least if I understand it rightly God was pleased to give to Man a double Life not two lives successive one before Death the other after but two conjoyn'd in the Body one Immortal which can be no other but that which is essential to the rational Soul and communicated to the Body by virtue of the intimate union of those two so different substances the other Mortal common to Brutes also and extinguishable by death which I deduce from the expansive motion of the Spirits of the Blood Nor hath this interpretation of the Iewish Doctors been for ought I know rejected by the Christian Scholes as unsound much less as Heretical and therefore I humbly conceive it is not unlawful for me to embrace it 2 That in this Life every individual Man hath also two distinct Souls one Rational by which he is made a reasonable Creature the other Sensitive by virtue of which he becomes a Sensitive Animal and that these are coexistent conjunct and cooperating in him untill death which
absolutly necessary besides the Member or part of the Animal to be moved three things which according to the Order of their Succession are 1. The Object 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Aristotle Lib. de communi Animalium motu cap. 7. terms it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which Invites or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which Offends 2. The Efficient call it what you please the Soul Mind or Intellect in Man the Imagination Phantasie or Brain in Brutes or Locomotive Animal Faculty in both which being invited or offended by the Object moves the whole Body or some Member of it in pursuance or avoidance thereof and 3. the Instrument used by the Efficient which seems to be double viz. Mediatum that by the mediation or intervention of which the Appetite Soul or Imagination doth as it were dispense its Command and Communicate Virtue motive to the Organ to be used and Immediatum that by which immediately the Command given is executed and the intended Motion performed As for the Necessity of the first and second of these three requisites to animal or voluntary Motion I think it needless for me to insist upon the explication thereof because it is most evident and on all Hands confessed that the Soul whether Rational or Irrational is the primary Agent in all voluntary Motions and that the same is thereunto incited by the good or evil appearing in the Object But as for the Instrumentum mediatum sive primum that upon which the Soul or Appetite immediately acting doth by the help thereof produce a Motion first in the ultimate Instrument which undoubtedly is the Muscle and then in the Member whose Motion conduces to the attainment of its end it is a Question and a great one too whether there be in truth a necessity of any such thing or not The Antients t is well known unanimously taught that the Soul effects Motion in the Muscles at pleasure by transmitting from the Brain by the Nerves into them a certain most thin most subtil and most agil Substance which they call therefore Animal Spirits by whose swift and copiose Influx the Muscles to be moved being in an Instant as it were inflated and distended Secundum latitudinem they are forced to contract or shorten themselves Secundam longitudinem and by that Contraction to pull and move the Members to which they are fastned And this Opinion hath been without any dispute embraced and asserted through a long train of Ages down to this in which we live But in this our more illuminate Age Fate has brought forth some Physicians of this Nation and Colledge of most profound Learning and admirable sagacity of Spirit who laying aside that so antique Hypothesis of Animal Spirits as both improbable and unnecessary hold it to be sufficient to solve all the Phaenomena of voluntary Motion if it be supposed that the dictates of the Soul are transmitted from the Brain to the Nerve and Muscle to be used not by emission of any Substance whatsoever but by a mere contraction of such Fibres of the Brain as are continued to that Nerve For the Nerve say they having its origin from the Fibres of the Brain and being at one end continued to them at the other inserted into the Head of the Muscle so as to make one continued Cord all along if a Motion be excited ad nutum animae in the Fibres of the Brain the same must be at the same time excited in the Nerve also and in the Muscle by reason of their Continuity Betwixt these two so different and irreconcileable Opinions I am forced to suspend my Judgment not yet able to discern which hath the advantage above the other in point of Verisimilitude To reject either of them as Erroneous would hardly consist with the modesty of a Philosopher who cannot but be conscious and ought to confess how abstruse a thing the nature of a Soul is how imperfect and confused the Notions are that Men have formed of their own Mind and how extremely difficult it is for human Reason to compose a congruous and satisfactory Discourse concerning the Oeconomy of the Brain in a living Creature which is as obscure to our understanding as the Effects of it are manifest to our Senses To reject Both because they are both embroyled with many Difficulties some of which seem to me to be insuperable were to make my slender Capacity the Measure of Probability to prefer the horrid darkness of Midnight to the hopeful dawning of Light in the Morning and to oblige my self to excogitate some third Hypothesis less liable to incongruities and Objections which is above my Power What then remains for me to do in this perplexity of Thoughts Only this to bring the whole Cause to the tribunal of your Judgment Most wise and most equal Arbiters there to be finally decided I resolve therefore by your Leave to handle this weighty controversie tanquam problema utrinque disputatum and while ye hold the Beam of the Balance to put into the Scales the principal Arguments alleaged on both Sides together with their respective difficulties not yet sufficiently solved to the end that ye may afer due perpension give Sentence which of the two Opinions is the more probable I begin from the FORMER out of respect to the Antients assuming to myself pro tempore the Person of a Defendant of Animal Spirits as the immediate instrument of the Soul in voluntary Motion in Man In the first place therefore I say That seeing every Instrument ought to be accommodate both to the nature of the Agent that is to use it so as to hold some proportion to the Energie of the one and to the Conditions of the other and seeing that voluntary Motion is commanded and executed in one and the same moment of Time with Velocity equal to that of Lightning considering this I say it seems necessary that the Instrument upon which the Soul immediately impresses her Power motive should be such as is naturally fit to convey the same from the Brain by the Nerves into the Muscles tanquam in instanti and most easily But in the whole Body nothing is found so easily and swiftly moveable as that most subtile and meteoriz'd Substance of which the Spirits Animal are supposed to consist and therefore it is consentaneous that they are the immediate Instrument of the Soul in voluntary Motion Here I foresee it will be Objected that although these Spirits be supposed to consist of Matter the most refined and most agil imaginable more subtil than the Particles of Light or Cartes's subtilis materia yet still they must be Bodies and therefore can hold no conceivable proportion to the Soul which is believed to be Incorporeal Nor indeed am I so vain as to hope ever to hear this Objection fully Selved Nevertheless I take liberty to observe that it lies as heavy upon the other Hypoth sis of the Muscles being moved by the Nerves excited or invigorated at their original
by Motion begun in the Fibres of the Brain by the Soul it being no less difficult to conceive how an incorporeal Agent cna Act upon a Corporeal Organ by way of simple contact or impression than how it can communicate a forse by Trancmission of Spirits most subtile most active nay more I may adventure to say this latter supposition is so much the less inconceivable than the former by how much more easily a most light and most agil Substance is put into Motion than a heavy and gross one Secondly evident it is that the motive Power of which we are speaking is not inherent in the Muscles themselves nor in the Nerves inserted into them but derived and immitted into them from the Brain ad nutum animae as she has occasion to use them If so what notion can we have for such a Power unless we conceive it to be a certain invigoration or force suddainly communicated to or impress'd upon the Fibres of the Muscles and wherein can we imagine that invigoration to consist if not in a distention of those Fibres by some influx from the Brain This very consideration seems to have induced that great Man Galen to deliver this for an undoubted truth in lib. de motu musculor cap. 2. Adeo certè magna quaedam vis est in nervis supernè à magno principio affluens non enim ex seipsis eam neque connatam habent c. Thirdly if there be no invigorating Influx from the Brain through the Nerves how comes it that an Obstruction or Compression of any one of them forthwith causes a Palsy in that part to which the obstructed or compress'd Nerve belongs Is it not only from hence that the intercourse betwixt the Brain and Muscles of that part is wholly stopped If the Nerves were designed and fraimed by Nature to do the office of Strings or Cords only why were they not made of one continued Substance but of many slender Filaments or Threads And why were not these small Threads closely twisted together into a strong Cord but extended as parallels side by side and intercepted with many narrow Canales or passages betwixt them and all inclosed within a membraneous Coat extremely thin and tender Certainly if we attently contemplate the artifice of Nature in the Figure and contexture of a Nerve we shall find our selves almost obliged to acknowledge that the Fibres were so disposed in Parallels with small Canales running along betwixt them to give free and quick passage to the subtile influence to be transmitted from the Brain into the Muscles for the invigoration of their Fibres And Galen reflecting upon this that if a Nerve be cut asunder the Muscle into which it was inserted becomes ever after incapable of being used to voluntary Motion from thence with great assurance concludes Nervi igitur rivorum in morem à cerebro ceu ex quodam fonte deducunt musculis vires Where 't is remarkable that he compares the Nerves not to Strings or Cords but to rivuletts or Conduit-Pipes framed for the conveyance of the invigorating influence or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he calls it first impetus from the Brain as from a Fountain And what could he have said either more intelligible in it self or more favorable to the doctrine of animal Spirits Fourthly and lastly it is not unworthy consideration that the voluntary Motion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Reptils such as Earth-Worms Snails and such like whose progression the Greeks call by a most proper Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 most accurately described by Aristotle lib. de incessu animal cap. 9. is performed by the help of a certain aerial or spirituose Substance issuing from their Heads discernable in Snail by the sight For if you put a large grey Snail into a clear glass Phial and hold him up against a good Light you may plainly perceive that when he begins to creep a Chain of little Bubbles will come from his Tail and move along one after another to the middle of his Back and thence up to his Head When the Snail remains quiet the motion of the Bubles ceaseth and as he again begins to advance they also begin their Course anew passing by a kind of slow Circulation from the Tail to the Head along the Back and from the Head to the Tail along the Belly So that it seems probable that these Bubbles being protruded or propelled in the manner described are instrumental to the Motion of the Snails forepart to which he afterdraws up his hinderpart arcuatim making an Arch in the middle and so advances Quia postquam priore parte processerit mox posteriorem ad illam se convolvendo trahit ita ut videatur arcuatim annulatim progredi as the many-tongued Monsr Bochart saith in his discription of the Motion of a Horse-leech in Hierozoic lib. 5. cap. 19. Now though Nature be observed to diversifie the Instruments of voluntary Motion in various Sorts of living Creatures according to the diversity of their Bulks Shapes Functions and necessities of Life and therefore to infer a parity of contrivance of them in more perfect Animals from an observation of the Action of those in less perfect be but an inartificial Argument yet forasmuch as she seldom varies her more general ways of formation but upon necessity and when she doth her deflections from her common Method are never so wide but still they carry some Analogie to them it seems not improbable that as the progressive Motion of Reptils is performed by the help of an Aerial Substance so likewise our muscular Motion is made by the help of a spirituose Influx from the Brain into the Nerves and Muscles And this is the sum of the principal Arguments urged partly by the Antient partly by the modern defenders of animal Spirits and of their necessary use in voluntary Motion I will now according to my promise change my Person and putting on that of an Opponent plead a while against both their Existence and their supposed use taking the liberty to allege what at present I remember to have been said by others and what I humbly conceive may with reason be said to weaken at least if not wholly subvert the former doctrine We Physicians indeed speak magnifickly of Spirits Animal as of the plenipotent and immediate instrument of the Soul in all her operations upon the Body confidently attributing to them veluti Demiurgis quibusdam whatever of designed Motions are performed by the Nerves and Muscles whatever of natural Motions are performed by the Diaphragm and Heart whatever of violent Motions happen in our exorbitant Passions in fine whatever of commerce or communication there is betwixt the Brain and all inferior Parts in the state of Nature as if we assented to the Dream of Heraclitus Ephesius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Diog. Laert. in vita Yea more in a Preternatural State also we make them only not omnipotent For what Disease of the
the Saline do nor are dispers'd by insensible transpiration but remain shut up as in a close prison and striving for liberty raise great tumults and pains Hence are excited various Symptoms according to the various parts into which the Fluxion rusheth in particular if the Fluxion be determin'd upon the Gutts there follow grievous Colic pains if in the Stomach a dire inflation of it if upon the Limms that sore affect which Physicians generally call a Rheumatisme which is not as some have erroneously thought rain'd down from the head but proceeds only from sulphureous Spirits effused out of the arteries into the habit of the body and therein imprison'd their own oyliness making them unapt to transpire and their tumultuous distension of the parts conteining them causing acute pains Hence also come wandring Scorbutic pains Hypochondriac winds rumblings in the stomach and gutts Head-aches the Tooth-ake c. And all these evils are the more aggravated by how much the more firm and tense the nerves of the part affected are whereas in Saline fluxions the contrary happens tho they be no less pernicious in the end by relaxing fretting and as it were melting the tone of the parts affected Finally if the strength of the nerves and fibres be greater than the force of the bloud flowing in from the arteries in that case succeeds a Disease è diametro contrary to Fluxion viz. Obstruction and Infarction and for the most part transpiration hinder'd The manner how seems to be this The too rigid tension of the nerves and fibres in any part rendring the passage of the arterial bloud through it more difficult than is requisite to the circuition of it freely the thicker and more viscid parts thereof must of necessity stick in their passage and so produce Obstructions And this vice alwayes is the more intended by how much the more languid and sluggish the Vital Spirits are For when these are copious and vigorous they easily prevail over the light renitence or reluctance of the nerves and maugre their opposition carry on the bloud in its circuit but when they flagg and act but dully they yield to the opposition of the nerves and fibres and leave the grosser and more viscid parts of the bloud sticking in the passages In a Cachexy Dropsy Asthma Scorbute obstruction of the pipes of the Lungs tumors and imflammations of the viscera c. the nerves commonly are more strict or tense than they ought to be But if a Saline fluxion chance to be conjoyn'd with or to supervene upon such an excessive tension of the nerves it either wholly solves the disease or very much mitigates it at least Whereas on the contrary if while the nerves and fibres continue strong such a constriction of them be accompanied with a Sulphureous fluxion then it causes dismal tempests in the parts affected Convulsions Epileptic fits Apoplexie extreme difficulty of breathing Suffocation Hysteric and other the like passions Now if the Genealogie of these Fluxions here describ'd be consentaneous to reason and experience it doth not a little confirm what hath been deliver'd touching the depraedation of the more easily exsoluble substance of the parts by the Spirits of the bloud For tho' what happens in a praeternatural state of the body be not alwayes a good Argument of what is done in the natural state yet in this case considering that the motion of the bloud is the same and that the Spirits also continue Spirits in both states so that the whole difference consists only in this that in the fluxions alleged the Spirits are suppos'd to be only deprav'd with Saline or Sulphureous qualities not wholly alienated from their nature considering this I say the inference I have made is not ingenuine For to argue from the identity of the effect to the identity of the cause or è converso is no Paralogism And so I conclude this not impertinent digression ¶ FROM the causes and manner of the continual consumtion of substance in Animals we may opportunely proceed to an inquiry into the causes and manner of the continual Restauration of the same by way of Nutrition Of this Restauration the Efficient principle or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Aristotle calls it is certainly the very same with the Generant or Formative because as I said before Generation cannot be effected without Augmentation and Augmentation is Nutrition Not that I am of their opinion who hold that Life and Nutrition differ not in re but only in ratione for the Human Embryo perhaps is nourish't before the Empsychosis but that I conceive that Life consists in and depends upon a continual generation of the Vital Spirits out of the most subtil active and volatile parts of the bloud and that Nutrition consists in reparation or instauration of what is absumed by apposition and assimilation of consimilar or congenerous matter So that according to the distinct notions I have of these Twinns Life is maintain'd by Dispersion of the most spirituose parts of the bloud and Nutrition is on the contrary affected by apposition and assimilation of new matter The Material or constituent Principle I take to be a certain mild sweet and balsamic liquor analogous to the white of an Egg or at least the Colliquamentum out of which the Chick is formed For since all Animals are nourish'd with the same out of which they were at first made up according to that common Axiom iisdem nutrimur ex quibus constamus and that of Aristotle eadem materia est ex qua augetur animal ex qua constituitur primùm and since they are all corporated ex colliquamento we may well conclude that the Succus nutritius sive ultimum nutrimentum partium is in all qualities semblable to the Colliquamentum of the white of an Egg. Farre from the white of truth therefore are they who think that the parts of the body being in substance divers the parts of the Aliment also ought to be equally divers as if Nutrition were really nothing but selection and similar attraction of convenient aliment and that there were not requir'd in every single part a concoction assimilation apposition and transmutation of one matter common to all For first 't is a difficult question whether there be in nature any such thing as Attraction or not and to prove Similar Attraction is yet more difficult so that the very fundament of this opinion is merely precarious and then 't is most evident from what we have said of the constitution and augmentation of all parts of an Embryo ex colliquamento that the Aliment common to all parts is Similar not Heterogeneous it being the proper work of the Plastic power still remaining in every Animal as to form all the various parts out of the same Homogeneous matter at first so to augment and repair them all during life out of like matter by transforming that into the substance of every part which is indeed potentially all parts but actually none as out
as to reject them should dare also to substitute in the room of them some new one of my own excogitation if not more perfect yet at least less culpable To these expecting Gentelmen therefore I say that much less of skill and strength being required to demolish than to build a Pigmy may be able to pull down what Giants have raised and that to form a true and complete definition of any the most obvious thing in Nature much more of Life which is extremly abstruse would puzzel a much stronger Brain than mine Well then may I be excused if conscious of my imparity to a task so desperate I forbear farther to expose my weakness by attempting it and choose rather to leave them to collect what my sentiments are of the nature of Life from my following discourse WHICH being designed only as a modest disquisition of the natural causes of Human Life I professedly pass by what that over-curiose nation of Scholemen impensly addicted to notions abstracted from all commerce with the Senses and to Speculations Metaphysical have delivered of the Life of Spirits of Angells Daemon's and other Beings of that kind subject neither to the Laws of Nature nor to the Empire of Fate And this I do because some of their Doctrines far transcend the capacity of my narrow Wit others seem more fine than useful and all are remote from my present institute I omit also what our equaly acute Dr. Glisson hath with admirable subtility of Wit and immense Labour of Meditation excogitated and not many Years before his Death divulged of the Energetic Life of Nature and its Faculties by virtue of which he supposed that even the most minute particles of this aspectable World do naturally perceive desire move themselves with Counsel and what is yet more wonderful frame Bodies for themselves to inhabit animate or inform them and perform other most noble operations Which I do not only because this opinion how favorable soever hath not yet been received as canonical by common assent of Philosophers but also because I humbly conceive it to be in all things the Name only excepted the same with that antique Dogma first delivered by Plato and after asserted by his Followers that all things in the Universe are Animate that is are naturally endowed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with Sense and Self-motion which hath been sufficiently impugned by Aristotle Lucretius Gassendus and all others who have refuted Plato's Doctrine de Anima mundi upon which it is grounded Not that I reject this opinion of natural Sense or Perception attributed to all things but that I am not yet convinced of the truth of it Insipientis est aliis dogmata illa aut commendare aut convellere de quorum veritate ipsemet adhuc dubitat And well may I suspend my assent to this opinion which gives to things inanimate such Faculties which my Philosophy will not grant to any but rational Creatures Nor indeed would either Lucretius or Des Cartes For the former though according to the Epicurean Hypothesis which he in all things followed he attributes to Atoms or as he calls them Solida Primordia rerum a Spontaneous Mobility nevertheless denies that they are naturally moved with Knowledg or Design in these Verses Lib. 2. Nam neque consilio debent tardata morari Nec perscrutari primordia singula quaeque Ut videant qua quidque geratur cum ratione And the Later in one of his Epistles to Mersennus Epistol parte 2. epist. 44. where he strictly examines the Doctrine of a certain Monk that ascribed to even the most minute particles of Matter a Power of moving themselves and other ingenite propensions the very same I guess with those supposed to be inseparably conjoyn'd with Natural Perception plainly declares his Judgment of the unreasonableness thereof in these Words Non probo indivisibilia ista neque naturales quas illis tribuit propensiones istiusmodi enim propensiones absque intellectu concipere nequeo ne irrationalibus quidem animalibus tale quidquam tribuo Sed quicquid in illis appetitus aut propensiones vocamus per solas Mechanicae regulas explico These two praeliminary Advertisements premised I come into the direct way of my intended disquisition That the Life of Man doth both originally spring and perpetually depend from the intimate conjunction and union of his Reasonable Soul with his Body is one of those few Assertions in which all Divines and natural Philosophers unanimously agree And they have reason For while the rational Soul continues in the Body so long Life continues and when the same is separated from the Body in that very moment of Time Death succeeds Now this rational Soul being by most wise Men granted to be a pure Spirit or substance merely Spiritual it is from thence necessarily consequent that the Life of it is Substantial that is the very substance of it considered as Metaphysicians love to speak non in ordine ad esse per se sed in ordine ad operationes For we dull-brain'd Mortals to whom it is not granted to be able to conceive the nature of Beings purely Spiritual by notions adaequate to it according to the Module of our understanding distinguish even in Angels their subsistence Fundamental from their Energetic Nature although in reality both are the same substance but diversly considered For this substantial Life though it may be as to its Operations by the same Divine Power that gave it suspended cannot yet be wholly taken away so as that it should after continue to be a Spirit Because if a Spirit be supposed to be deprived of Life the very substance of it must also be supposed to be at the same time annihilated For who can conceive so gross a contradiction as a dead Angel The same may be as truly said also of a Rational Soul which is allowed to be a Spirit too Wherefore the Life of it is as I affirmed Substantial and Essential and consequently incapable to be taken away unless the Soul or Spirit it self be at the same time annihilated Which the Omnipotent Creator can indeed when he shall so please do but it doth not appear from any place of holy Scripture that he either hath done or ever will do it and therefore let no man doubt of the Immortality of his Soul Sic etenim lethi praeclusa ' st janua menti From this our fundamental position then that the Life of a Man is in his rational Soul essentially it follows of necessity that the same Life cannot be in his Body too essentially but by way of Participation or Communication Nor is it difficult to conceive in our mind that the Life of the Body being separable from it is only communicated to it or derived from another thing of a different Nature For if a substance essentially living be intimately united to another substance of its own nature void of Life the thing composed of those two substances so united must have Life but
so that the first part live substantially or by virtue of its Essence the other only by participation of that essential Life Certain therefore it is and evident that the Life of a Man comes immediately from and depends upon the Presence of his rational Soul in his Body Which is the Truth we sought after I say immediately because the Life of the Soul is originally from God who created it a living Substance Of the Souls of Brute Animals the same may not be affirmed For though it be true indeed that their Souls also are the Principle or Fountain whence Life is communicated to the Bodies they inform yet 't is equally true that these Souls being Material or Corporeal their Life cannot be essential to the matter of which they are composed but flows from and depends upon the determinate Modification of that matter from which their Souls Result So that in Brutes as it is the Mode or manner of the disposition of the Matter not simply the matter it self that constitutes the Soul So it is the Hypostasis or subsistence of the same Mode upon which alone the Life that is the Act Energy and Vigor of the Soul depends No wonder then if we believe the Souls of all Brutes to be by their nature Mortal and to be actually dissolved together with their Bodies by Death That I may explain what I understand by the Modification of the matter which is here supposed to constitute the Soul of a Brute give me leave in this place to make a short halt for it is not a digression while I briefly declare what my sentiments are concerning the Souls of Brutes I humbly and with Submission to wiser Heads conceive 1 That the diversity of kinds observed among Brutes proceeds immediately from the divers Modifications of the common matter of their Souls and the respectively divers Organizations of their Bodies from both which by admirable artifice conjoyned and united into one complex System or Machine various faculties and proprieties must of necessity result by which those several kinds are among themselves distinguished 2 That the Specific or determinate Modification of the Soul and respective Organization of the Body in every distinct kind is to be wholly attributed to the Plastic virtue or formative Power innate and affixed to the Seed of the Generants 3 That this Plastic virtue is originally founded in the still efficacious Fiat pronounced in the act of Creation by the Divine Architect of all things who commanding all Animals to increase and multiply gave them at the same time power to fulfill that Command by endowing their Seed with an active Principle to form and impressing upon that Agent a certain idea or exemplar according to which it is obliged and directed how to form and not otherwise provided the Matter upon which it operates be obedient and susceptible of that Idea So that the Idea first conceived in the Divine Intellect and then prescribed as a Pattern to the Plastic Spirit with which the genital matter is impregnated being not in all kinds nay not in any two kinds of Animals one and the same but a peculiar Idea assigned to each kind it comes to pass that the Plastic Spirit thus directed regulated and confined by the Law of Nature doth out of that genital matter form the Soul and Organize the Body of every Brute Animal of any one of those numerous kinds exactly according to the prototype of that kind And by this means I conceive all Brutes to be generated both Soul and Body and their distinct Species without confusion or innovation conserved throughout all ages If I conceive amiss be pleased to consider that many excellent Wits treating of the same Subject have done so before me and that the Theorem it self is so abstruse that as Cicero 2. Tusculan said of the various Opinions of Philosophers about the nature of a Soul Harum Sententiarum quae verasit Deus aliquis viderit quae verisimillima magna quaestio est so may I say Man may dispute what is most probable but God alone knows what is true concerning the Souls of Beasts and their production Notwithstanding this darkness of my way I must adventure to go a little farther in it and endevor to explain 1 What the Substance of a Sensitive Soul is or of what Particles it is contexed 2 In what the Life or Act and Vigor of it consisteth and 3 What are the primary Functions and Operations of it As to the First then it seems highly probable that a Sensitive Soul is not a pure Spirit such as the rational Soul of Man is but a meer Body yet a most subtile and extremely thin one as being context of most minute and most subtile Corpuscules or Particles For if it were Incorporeal it could neither act nor suffer in the Body which it animate's or informs not Act because it could not touch any part not Suffer because it could not be touch't by any part of the Body But that it doth both act and suffer in the Body is most evident from its Sensations of external Objects from its affects or Passions consequent to those Sensations from the motions it causeth in the Members respective to those Passions and from its Union and consension with the Body in all things I call it therefore a Body and say that it is composed or by an admirable contexture made up of most thin and most subtile Particles such perhaps as are most smooth and most round like those of Flame or Heat because otherwise it could not diffuse it self so swiftly through nor cohere within with the whole Body and all parts of it and because when it departs out of the Body the Body is not perceived to lose any the least thing of its former Bulk Figure or Weight no more than a Vessel of Wine loses by the exhalation of its Spirits or a piece of Amber-Grise loses by emission of its Odor So that we may imagine that if the whole sensitive Soul of an Elephant were conglomerated or condensed it might be contained in a place no bigger than a Cherry-stone These constituent particles or Elements of a Sensitive Soul I suppose to be for the most part analogous to the nature of Fire because the natural heat of all Animals comes from the Soul and their Life consisteth in that Heat I also suppose them to be at first conteined in the genital matter the most spirituose or active particles of which are in the act of formation by the Plastic Virtue Selected Disposed Formed and as it were contexed into a little Soul and the grosser or less agil framed by degrees into an organical Body of competent dimensions and of Figure answerable to the Specific Idea by the Divine Creator pre-ordained and assigned to that Species to which the Generants belong And this I suppose because the brisk vigorous and swift motions of the Soul in the Body require it to be composed of particles most subtile and active and because as well
the Pulse of the Heart and Arteries 3 Distribution of the Blood by virtue of that pulsation 4 Communication of Life to all parts of the Body by means of that distribution and 5 Reduction of arteriose Blood to the state of Venose the exhalations of it being first partly consumed partly condensed and absorp't into the Lympheducts Of each of the Acts we must particu-larly enquire The FIRST Act viz. the Generation of Original Life in the Blood it self seems to be perform'd in this manner The vital Spirit rector of the Blood by its own natural force and expansive energy endevors to exagitate and expand the Blood now again brought into the Ventricles of the Heart while the grosser parts of the Blood by their nature more sluggish and unactive resist and hinder that endevor to expansion From this resistence or checking instantly arises a certain Colluctation or mutual striving between the expansive motion or endevor of the vital Spirits on one part and the renitency of the grosser parts of the Blood on the other And from this Colluctation an actual Heat is quickly excited or kindled in the Blood actual Heat being nothing else but an expansive Luctation of the Particles of the Body or Subject in which it is as the illustrious Lord Chancellor Bacon hath with admirable sagacity from many instances collected in historia calidi in novi Organi Pag. 218. Seeing therefore that this motion of the Blood consisteth in the expansive endevor of the Spirits and the reluctation of the other parts of it this Motion consequently is actual Heat But because this expansive Luctation is not hostil or noxious but Amicable Benign and tending not only to the conservation of the Blood but also to the exaltation of all its Faculties and Operations and because it comes as I said a little before from within from the Spirit conteined in and ruling the Blood therefore the Motion or Heat thence resulting is also Vital For in that very expansive motion of the Blood doth the formal reason of Life originally consist This being a Theorem not a little abstruse and of very great Moment chiefly to Physicians 't is requisite I should endevor both to clear and establish it That I may do so I begg leave to set before you a short Series or Train of certain Propositions of which the subsequent depending like the Links of a Chain upon the antecedent they may at length convince you of the Truth from thence to be concluded PROPOS I. The Heat is only Motion THe verity of this is apparent 1 From Flame which is perpetually and violently Moved 2 From the like agitation of all parts of servent or boyling Liquors 3 From the incitation and increment of Heat caused by Motion as in blowing up Fire by Bellows or Winds 4 From the very extinction of Fire and Heat by all strong compression which arresteth the Motion thereof and instantly causeth it to cease 5 From hence that most Bodies are destroyed at least sensibly altered by all Fire and by strong and vehement Heat which introducing a Tumult Perturbation and rapid Motion upon their parts by degrees totally dissolves the cohesion or continuity of them Nevertheless this Proposition is to be understood with due limitation or as it stands for the Genus of Heat not that Heat generates Motion or that Motion generates Heat always tho both these be in some things true but that Heat it self or the very essence of Heat is Motion and nothing else yet a certain peculiar sort of Motion or limited by the differences to be subjoyned PROPOS II. That Heat is an Expansive motion by which a Body strives to dilate it self and recede into a larger space than what it before possessed THis also is evident 1 In Flame where the Fume or Fat Exhalation manifestly widens itself and spreads into Flame 2 In all boyling Liquors which sensibly swell rise up and emit Bubbles still urging the process of self-dilation untill they become more extense and are turned into Vapor or Smoke or Aire 3 In Wood and all other combustible matter set on Fire where is sometimes an exudation of moysture alwaies an evaporation 4 in the melting of Metals which being most compact Bodies do not easily swell and dilate themselves and yet the Spirit of them being once excited by Fire begins instantly to dilate itself and continues to push away and drive off the grosser parts till their coherence being interrupted they become liquid and if the Heat be more and more intended it dissolves and converts much of the fixed Metal into a volatil Substance Gold only excepted 5 in a Staff of Wood or Cane which being heat in hot Embers becomes easily flexible a sign of internal dilatation 6 In Aire above all things which instantly and manifestly expands itself by a little Heat 7 In the contrary nature of Cold which contracts most Bodies forcing them into narrower spaces and shrinking their dimensions so that in extreme Frosts Nayls have been observed to fall out of Doors and Vessels of Brass to crack with many other admirable effects of great Cold noted by the Honourable Mr. Boyl in his most accurate History of Cold. So that Heat and Cold though they do many actions common to both are yet è diametro contraries in this that Heat gives a Motion expansive and dilating but Cold gives a Motion contractive and condensing PROPOS III. That Heat is a Motion expansive not uniformly through the whole Subject but through the lesser Particles thereof not free but checkt hinder'd and repulsed or reverberate So that the Motion becomes interrupt alternative perpetually trembling and striving and incited by that resistence and repuls Whence comes the Fury of Fire and Heat pent in and opposed in their Expansion OF this we have instances 1 In Flame boyling Liquors melted Metals glass Furnaces c. all which perpetually tremble swell up and again subside alternately 2 In Fire which burns more fiercely and scorches more ardently in frosty Weather 3 in common Weather-glasses in which when the Aire is expanded uniformly and equally without impediment or repuls no Heat is perceived but if you hold a Pan of burning Coals near the bottom and at the same time put a Cloth dipped in cold Water upon the top the check and repuls thereby given to the expansion of the Aire will cause a manifest trepidation in the Water and intend the borrowed Heat of it 4 In Winds pent in which though they break forth with very great violence so that their motion must needs be extremely rapid and dilating do not yet from thence conceive any sensible Heat because the motion is in all the particles of them equally and proceeds uniformly without check or interruption whereas in the burning Wind from thence called by Aristotle in Meteor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 great heat seems to be generated from the frequent repulses and repercussions of its rapid Motion insomuch that it scorches where it blows chiefly in narrow
delivers the first into a free injoyment of her essential immortality but dissolves the latter into the Elements or matter of which it was composed is an opinion very antient highly consentaneous to reason and defended not only by many eminent Philosophers as well antique as modern but even by some Divines of great learning Piety and Fame among whom I need name only Gassendus of the Roman and Dr. Hammond of our Church The former of which hath professedly asserted it in Physiologia Epituri cap. de Animae sede the other in Notes on the 23. Verse of the 5 Chap. of St. Pauls first Epist. ad Thess. Where interpreting these Words of the divinely inspir'd Author 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 integer vester spiritus anima corpus he conceived that the Apostle divides the whole Man into his three constituent parts viz. the Body which comprehends the Flesh and Members the Sensitive or Vital Soul which is common also to Brutes and the Spirit by which is denoted the reasonable Soul originally created by God infused into the Body and from thence after death to return to God and this his exposition he confirms by agreeing Testimonies of many Ethnic Philosophers and some antient Fathers Much more I should here have said in defence of this opinion had I not thought it less labour to direct the unsatisfied to a little Treatise intitled a Natural History of the Passions publish'd about three Years past where the Author professedly handles it Now if either of these two recited opinions be granted to be true and 't is no easy task to refute either of them then both my positions that occasioned my recital of them may be also true and so the supposed inconsistency of them solved Presuming then that what I have said concerning the First Act of the Blood or the Generation of Original Life in the Blood and the manner how it is performed is probable and sufficient to explicate the Theorem I here conclude my discourse of it ¶ The SECOND Act of the Blood in the race of Life is the Excitation of the Motion or Pulsation of the Heart and Arteries which seems to be done in this manner The Blood descended partly out of the Trunc of the Vena Cava partly from the Arteria Venosa into the Ears or Portals of the Heart and there beginning its expansive motion fills them even to distention and by that distention irritates or incites their Fibres which are numerose and strong to contract themselves by the motion of Restitution By this constriction of the Fibres on all sides the cavities of the Ears of the Heart are necessarily closed or streightned and by consequence the Blood newly admitted into them is sequeez'd out into the two Ventricles of the Heart forcing the Valves called Tricuspides or Trisulcae which are seated at the Gates or Mouths of the Ventricles and open from without inward to open themselves and give way The Blood thus propuls'd into the Ventricles of the Heart and somewhat increasing or intending its expansive Motion fills them even to distention and to the shutting of the Valves which it so lately open'd so that at that time no more Blood can be admitted nor what is admitted recoyl or return by the Wicket through which it enter'd The Ventricles of the Heart being thus filled and distended and by virtue of their Fibres spontaneously contracting themselves into a much narrower compass strongly compress the Blood contained in them and force it to thrust back three other Valves call'd Sigmoides which open outwards and to rush forth partly into the Venae Arteriosa leading it into the Lungs from the right Ventricle partly into the Aorta or great artery from the left By this constriction of the two Ventricles of the Heart which is their proper and natural Motion the Circulation as they call it of the Blood is chiefly effected that Blood which is out of the right Ventricle express't through the Vena Arteriosa into the Lungs being impell'd forward till it arrive in the Arteria Venosa that brings it into the left Ventricle and that which is expell'd from the left Ventricle into the great Artery being by the Branches thereof distributed into all the parts of the Body The Blood being in this manner squirted out and the irritation ceasing the Ventricles instantly restore themselves to their middle position and make way for the reception of more Blood from the Ears of the Heart as before and then being by the Influx and expansive Motion thereof again distended and irritated repeat their Constriction and thereby eject it and this reciprocation or alternate dilatation and constriction or Diastole and Systole of the two Ventricles of the Heart together with the Arteries continued to them is what we call their Pulsation and the grand cause of the perpetual Circuition of the Blood as the alternate expansion and repression of the Spirits during that pulsation is that motion which Dr. Glisson first named the Mication of the Blood comprehending the double motion in that single appellation The Blood then it is that alone excites the Pulsation of the Heart and Arteries by distending them not by reason of any actual Ebullition or any considerable Rarifaction it undergoes in either of the Ventricles or in their avenues but as I humbly conceive merely by its quantity rushing in Not by Ebullition or Effervescence as Aristotle who gave it the Name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 believ'd 1 Because no ebullition of any Liquor whatsoever proceeding either from external Heat or from intestine Fermentation is constantly equal or uniform whereas the Pulse of the Heart and Arteries and consequently the motion of the Blood that causeth it is in Men healthy temperate and undisturbed by Passion constantly equal or of the same tenor and rhythm 2 Because the greater the Ebullition of the Blood the greater would be the pulsation of the Heart but in burning Fevers though there be a very great effervescence of the Blood arising from an extraordinary effort of the vital Spirits contending against oppression by the putrefactive or febrile Ferment yet the Pulse most frequently is low and weak as Galen himself observed 3 Because in living dissections if either of the Ventricles of the Heart or the great Artery be pierced with a lancet pure and florid Blood indeed will spring from the Wound in every Systole but not frothy not boyling nor meteorized nay not to be by any sign of difference distinguished from Blood at the same time emitted from the Vena Cava of the same Animal An Argument certainly of itself sufficient to subvert the Ebullition of the Blood in the Ventricles of the Heart excogitated by Aristotle at least if he were Author of the Book de Respiratione vulgarly ascribed to him to solve the Phaenomenon of the Pulse and to this day obstinately defended by many learned men seduced by the Authority of his great name 4 If the Blood suffer'd any such Ebullition an immersion or
aestimari debeat These remarkable texts I have recited not to prolong my discourse but to confirm whatsoever I have said of the generation of Life original in the Blood and of the communication of influent Life from the same Blood to all parts of the Body that so I might with more assurance leave this fourth Act of the Blood fully explain'd and pass to the ¶ FIFTH and last Which consisteth in the dffusion of the exhalations of the Blood raised by the expansive Motion or actual Heat of it and which reduceth it from the State of Arteriose Blood to that of Venose For the Blood newly impregnate with Life and kept a while in restraint by the thick Walls of the Heart and firm Coats of the Arteries no sooner arrives at the habit of the parts but instantly it begins to disperse its more volatile Particles in Steams or Exhalations and those being diffused it becomes calm and sedate and is in that composed condition transferred into the capilray Veins to be at length brought again to the Heart Of these Exhalations the more subtil and fugitive part exspires into the Aire by insensible transpiration the rest striking against membranose and impervious Parts or perhaps against the very Parenchyma of them is stopped and repercuss'd and condensed into a Dew Which after it hath moistned the parts is by their tonic motion squeez'd into the Lympheducts and by them carried off toward the Centre of the Body In the mean time the Blood after this manner calmed and recomposed returns quietly and slowly toward the Heart therein to be quickned heated and impregnated anew by the expansive Motion of its Spirits being driven on all the way by more Blood continually following and pressing it and by other concurrent Causes by me a little before particularly mentioned And this I believe to be the manner and reason of the perpetual Circuition of the Blood during Life Now reflecting upon the five Acts of the Blood described in the circular Race of Life the Sum of all my perplex and tedious disquisition concerning it amounts to no more but this That the Mication of the Blood proceeds originally from the expansive motion of the Spirits of it somewhat restrain'd and repulsed by the gross and less active parts and incited by that opposition that from this Mication Life Original is as it were kindled in the Blood passing through the Heart that Life influent is communicated to all parts of the Body from the Blood transmitted to them through the Arteries and from the union of the vital Spirits contain'd in the Blood so brought into them with the Spiritus insitus of every part that receives it that to that noble end Nature hath ordained that the Blood should be speedily distributed to all parts through the Arteries by the Heart spontaneously contracting itself and so soon as it hath done that its grand Office of reviving them and diffused its exhalations be brought back again to the Heart therein to conceive vital Heat anew and in fine that the Life of all Animals depends immediately or primarily upon the regular Mication and next upon this perpetual Flux and reflux of the Blood by the glorious Inventor of it Dr. Harvey rightly called not the Circulation but CIRCUITION of the Blood Quòd ejus semper redeat labor actus in orbem How probable these things are Ye who are Philosophers and Anatomists have indeed a right to Judge but ye must pardon me if I adventure to say that ye have no right to Judge whether they be true or not For what Seneca Natural Quaest. lib. 7. cap. 29 with great Wisdom and Modesty spake of his own reasonings about the nature and causes of Comets may be with equal reason applied also to mine concerning Life which in more then one thing resembles a Comet viz. Quae an vera sint Dii sciunt quibus est scientia veri Nobis rimari illa conjecturâ ire in occulta tantum licet nec cum fiducia inveniendi nec sine spe Huc item referri potest quod Atheniensis hospes respondebat Clinio apud Platonem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vera haec esse approbare cùm multi de iis ambigant solius Dei est If you grant them to be consentaneous to right reason and observations Anatomic I may then not impertinently conclude this Disquisition with the same Sentence with which my Master Gassendus is said to have concluded his Life Quantula res est vita hominis ¶ EPILOGUE AUGUSTUS ye know notwithstanding he had long enjoyed whatever the greatest part of mankind calls Happiness could not yet when dying afford to call Human Life by any better Name than that of a Comedy or Farce asking his Friends that stood by him Ecquid iis videretur mimum vitae commodè transegisse And that this Farce consisteth of five natural Acts too I have endevored in my precedent Discourse to evince Why then may not ye expect that I should in keeping of Decorum so far persue this double Analogie as to my short History of Life to subjoyn an Epilogue Supposing therefore that ye do I hold myself obliged to add one such as seems to me to be neither indecent nor impertinent It shall be a short History or Tale call it whether ye please Written by Philostratus in lib. 4. cap. 16. de vita Apollonii Tyanei Which I through hast forgot to touch upon in its due place and in which there occurrs more than one thing worthy to be remarked Be pleased then to hear first the Story itself in the Authors own Words and then my brief reflections upon the things therein chieflly considerable The Story is this The things I thence collect are these 1. That the Maid was not really Dead but only seemed to be so and consequently that the raising of her by Apollonius was no Miracle For the Author himself though in the first Line so bold as to call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Miracle is yet so modest in the second as to render it doubtful by these Words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Virgo mori visa est the Maid seemed to be Dead i. e. She was not really Dead and after in his Philosophical descant upon the act of her resuscitation in these Utrum verò scintillam animae in ipsa Apollonius invenerit quae ministros medicosque latuerat an decidens forte pulvia dispersam penè jam extinctam animam calefaciens in unum congregaverit difficile conjectatu est Which is a plain confession that probably she was only in a Swoun because the Rain that fell upon her Face might raise her 2. That 't is probable the Maid lay intranced from a violent fit of the Mother For this terrible Accident invaded her 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the very Hour of her Marriage a time when Virgins commonly are most prone to have their Blood and other Humours violently agitated by various Passions which many times cause great commotions
namely into bones cartilages ligaments tendons membranes fibres c. So that all the Organs are at length compos'd of dissimilar parts by wonderful artifice context without the least of confusion or incongruity Which deserves to be reckon'd the seventh Act. 8. In that work of Organization 't is credible the inimitable Artist divides without section only by terminating the parts and unites without glew or cement only by continuing them to the common term or bounds which depends more upon union of matter than upon union of nature By these admirable artifices of Division and Unition the Plastic Spirit perforates separates conjoins cements the yet fluid at least soft Stamina of the parts where how and as often as need requires it deduces and runns out their Rivulets terminated in the fluid matter as by chanels it preserves from confusion the two different Colliquamenta and the Yolk divided as it were by partitions it so distinguishes and disterminates even contiguous and semblable parts that they may be diversly moved at the same time without interfering or impediment and each yield to other when occasion requires and thus almost all fibres very many membranes and in many sorts of Animals the Lobes of the Lungs and Liver and the Cartilages mutually touching each other in the joints c. are divided among themselves In a word by these wayes and degrees here by me from Malpighius his Microscopical Observations collected and rudely described it seems most probable that the Embryo is form'd augmented and finish'd in an Egg. Now therefore that we may accommodate this Epitome to our present Argument if this be the method and process that Nature uses in the Generation of Oviparous Animals and if she uses the like in the production of Viviparous also as Dr. Harvies observations and our own assure us that she doth we may safely conclude that Human Embryons are in like manner form'd augmented and finish'd by one and the same Plastic Spirit out of one and the same matter the Colliquamentum Quod er at probandum I add that the same Plastic Spirit remaining and working within us through the whole course of our life from our very first formation to our death doth in the same manner perpetually regenerate us out of a liquor analogous to the white of an Egg by transmuting the same into the substance of the solid parts of our body For as I said before Nutrition is necessary to all Animals not only in respect of the Augmentation of their parts while they are little Embryons but also in respect of their Conservation after during life because their bodies being in a natural consumption or exhaustion would inevitably be soon resolv'd into their first elements unless the providence of Nature had ordain'd a continual renovation or reparation of the parts by substitution and assimilation of fresh matter in the room of those particles dispers'd and consum'd Having therefore to some degree of probability explain'd the former necessity of Nutrition and the causes of it my next business must be to inquire into the Later Which that I may the more effectually do I find my self obliged to begin my scrutiny from the Causes of the perpetual Decay or Depredation of the substance of our bodies viz. the Efficient or Depraedator and the Matter or substance thereby consum'd and the Manner how The Depraedator then or Efficient cause of the perpetual consumtion of our bodies seems to be what all Philosophers unanimously hold it to be the Vital Heat of the bloud therein first kindled by the Plastic Spirit continually renew'd by the Vital Spirit and by the arteries diffus'd to all parts of the body that they may thereby be warm'd cherish'd and enliven'd This Lar familiaris or Vital Heat continually glowing within us and principally in the Ventricles of the Heart call'd by Hippocrates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ingenitus ignis by Aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 accensio animae in corde and flamma Biolychnii the flame of the Lamp of Life by others and by others again ignea pars Animae Sensitivae is what Physicians generally have heretofore understood by Calidum innatum tho' they seem to have had but an obscure and inadaequate notion of the thing it self as I hope to evince when I shall come to inquire what life is and upon what it chiefly depends Meanwhile supposing it to be an Actual Heat consisting in a certain motion of the various particles of the bloud and in some degree analogous to fire or flame I cannot conceive how 't is possible for it to subsist or continue for so much as one moment of time unless it be maintain'd by convenient fewel which is thereby uncessantly fed upon and by degrees consum'd for it is of the nature of all fire how gentle or mild soever to generate and conserve it self only by preying upon and destroying the matter in which it is generated This Vital Heat therefore without intermission agitating dissolving and consuming the minute and most easily exsoluble particles of the body must be the Depraedator here sought after So that in truth we have one and the same cause both of our life and of our death or to speak more properly our very life is nothing but a continual death and we live because we die For we live so long as while this internal Vestal Heat is kept glowing in the bloud and when it ceases to glow either from want of convenient sustenance or by violent suffocation life is instantly extinguish'd So true even in this natural sense is that Distich of Euripides Quis novit autem an vivere hoc sit emori An emori hoc sit quod vocamus vivere The Matter consum'd I humbly conceive to be for the greatest part the fluid parts of the body chiefly the bloud and spirits which are most easily exsoluble and somewhat tho' but little of the substance also of the solid parts For Experience teaches that divers Animals Bears Dormice Swallows c. sleep the whole Winter without receiving any supply of aliment and yet have all the solid parts of their bodies as large and firm when they awake again in the Spring as when they first betook themselves to their dens or dormitories and the Reason hereof seems to be this that their Vital Heat being all that time calm and gentle consumes their bloud and spirits but slowly and very little of their solid parts as a lamp burns long when the oyl that feeds it is much and the flame but little and calm We have Examples also of Leucophlegmatic Virgins who from a gradual decay of Appetite have fall'n at length into an absolute aversion from all food and endur'd long abstinence without either miracle or imposture and yet notwithstanding have not been emaciated in proportion to the time of their fasting Whence 't is probable that in our bodies there is not so rapid and profuse an expense or exhaustion of the substance of the solid parts as heretofore many learn'd Physicians
have imagin'd to be made by the activity of the Vital Heat If it be objected that in many diseases the habit of the body is wont to be very much extenuated we are provided of a double answer First That extenuation seems to proceed rather from a meer subsidence or flaccidity of the Musculous flesh for want of bloud and the nourishing juice to fill and plump it up than from any great deperdition of the substance of the fibres of which the Muscles are mostly made up otherwise such decayes could not be so soon repair'd as we observe them to be in the state of convalescence Secondly Whatever be the cause of the extenuation objected it impugns not our present supposition which extends not beyond the natural and ordinary depraedation made by the Vital Heat in the state of Health And as for the Manner how the bloud spirits and other fluids and if ye please to have it so also the less fixt and more easily exsoluble particles of the solid parts are consum'd by the Vital Heat this may be sufficiently explain'd by the familiar example of oyl consum'd by the flame of a Lamp Whether we take fire or flame to be a substance luminose and heating or conceive it to be only a most violent motion of globular particles in its focus most certain it is that it consisteth in a perpetual fieri i. e. in a continual agitation or accension of the particles of its 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pabulum or fewel and perishing as fast as it is propagated so that fire is made fire and again ceaseth to be fire in every the shortest moment of time and when in the combustible matter there remain no more particles in which it may generate it self anew it instantly perishes Now continual Dispersion being the proper and visible effect of fire or flame the matter or fewel wherein it subsisteth cannot but be in continual flux or decay In like manner the Vital Heat of Animals subsisting by a continual accension of new spirits in the blood as that is passing through the Heart those vital spirits transmitted from thence through the arteries to the habit of the body no sooner arrive there but having warm'd and enliven'd the solid parts they immediately fly away and disperse themselves by insensible transpiration carrying along with them many watery vapors and perhaps some sulphureous exhalations Moreover there being in all the solid parts of the body certain mild sweet and balsamic spirits as it were affixt unto and concorporated with them 't is very probable that the Vital Spirits acting upon them also by way of exagitation by little and little dislodge them render them Volatil and at length wholly disperse them whereupon the minute particles in which they did reside become mortified and as excrements are excluded together with the exhalations of the blood And this I apprehend to be the reason and manner of the depraedation made upon the body by the Vital Heat Here no man will I hope exact from me an accurate computation of the daily expenses of this Vital Heat which like some Governors rules by exhausting If any should I might perhaps applaud his curiosity but should not be able to satisfie it For so great is the difference among men in respect of temperament diet age exercise the season of the year and various other circumstances that no definite calculation can be made of this dispense no not in those who keep to the strictest rules of an Ascetic life weighing themselves and their meat and drink as Cornaro is reported to have done daily We may indeed conjecture from the Static experiments of Sanctorius that the expense is great for instance if forty pounds of meat and drink be suppos'd sufficient to maintain a man of a middle stature sober and of good health for ten days and about twenty pounds be assign'd to the excrements voided by stool and urine in that time the other twenty pounds may be reasonably ascribed to insensible transpiration but still this is mere conjecture Let it then suffice that we certainly know the quantity of bloud and spirits daily exhausted by the Vital Heat that conserves life in us is very great and that the greatest part of the matter of insensible transpirations is the Vital Spirits which are continually generated and continually dispers'd How apt and powerful these Vital Spirits are by reason of their subtility and brisk motions to exagitate and disperse the more exsoluble particles of even the nerves fibres membranes and other tender and sensile parts may be in some measure collected from various diseases and symptoms that seem to arise from their various depravations or vicious qualities I shall not therefore goe much out of my way if I make a short Digression to recount a few of those painful and contumacious Maladies which are with good reason referrible to the vices of the Spirits rendring the tone of the nervous parts either more strict or more lax than it ought to be at least according to the doctrine of Prosper Alpinus not long since reviv'd and illustrated by Dr. Franc. Glisson whose name is Elogie sufficient If it happens that the Blood is too vinose i. e. too abundant in Spirits as in Good fellows commonly it is many times it induceth diseases depending upon Fluxion For being by the arteries protruded into the more tender parts with greater force and impetuosity than is fit it rather invades than cherishes them by that violence putting their unfixt particles into a flux And this Fluxion usually first invades such parts as being weaker than the rest are therefore more dispos'd to receive it If the prevailing Spirits of the bloud be not only Vinose but Saline also many times there insues the like Fluxion conjoin'd with a languor and laxity of the tone of the parts such as is alwayes observ'd in Catarrhs in moist Coughs in Ebriety great heaviness to sleep the running Gout c. And 't is remarkable that these Fluxions are usually so much the more fierce and vexations by how much the more infirm and yielding the nerves and fibres of the part invaded are because these want strength to make resistence by vigorous contraction of themselves whereas nerves naturally strong and tense somewhat repress and break the force of the bloud rushing in upon them Which is perhaps one if not the chief reason why men of firm and vigorous nerves are very seldom or never infested by the Gout If this resolving fluxion chance to be accompanied with a Fermentation of the bloud then commonly the evil consequent is a rheumatic arthritic or pleuritic Fevre On the contrary if the Spirits that have obtain'd dominion in the bloud be Sulphureous or oyly there follows a Fluxion causing a Constriction and shutting up of the invaded part For tho' the arteries poure out bloud abounding in impetuous Spirits and so cause a Fluxion yet notwithstanding those Spirits by reason of their oyliness neither easily pass through the habit of the parts as
from but in some sort opposite to the later For the present object is displeasing and troublesom to the stomach the absent grateful and when present satisfactory 1. The Absent object proper to hunger I conceive with our most excellent Dr. Glisson to be that nutritive Succulencie or juiciness which all wholsom meats contain in them more or less and which being alterable is apt to be changed into Chyle viz. a certain substance or matter mild tender easily mutable abounding in sweet and fixt spirits not destitute of fatness temper'd with a due portion of earth and condited with some salt of its own These are the qualities of that matter which I call succulent and nutritive and which I hold to be the proper absent object of the faculty of feeling hunger For all aliments contain in them copious spirits and those for the most part fixt which the stomach by inducing fermentation upon them excites and brings to a certain moderate fluor that they may more commodiously be thence transmitted into the milky veins and become nourishment partly to the bloud and vital spirits partly to the spermatic and solid parts of the body They all contein also some fat more or less in them which fat as the Oracle of experience teacheth is highly profitable to appease the importunity of hunger and desirable for nourishment In fine they all contein also somwhat of salt and somwhat of an earthy substance and without the alloy of these two ingredients neither could the spirits conserve their fixation nor the fat its sweetness Now this nutritive Succulency the proper object of hunger is said to be absent not that it is perpetually so or that it is not perceiv'd when it is present but only because in the principal action of the Faculty namely hunger from which the whole is denominated it is really absent Besides the utility of things is better understood by the want than by the full fruition of them nor should we take notice that the stomach perceives the meat contain'd in it and is therewith appeas'd and satiated unless we were somtimes urged and molested by hunger upon the want of meat However most certain it is that this Object when present is alwayes perceiv'd by the stomach with complacency and delight and when absent is much more esteem'd and therefore the object in hunger is justly call'd absent and the whole Faculty as justly defined Sense of hunger and Appetite of meat 2. The Praesent object is that offensive and gnawing kind of pain that molesteth the Stomach whensoever it wants and craves meat The formal Reason of this ingrateful sensation seems not to consist as our Master Galen and the whole Schole of Physicians ever since his dayes have taught in a certain Suction for neither can any of the constituent parts of the Ventricle cause any such motion in it nor can the Ventricle suck it self because no natural Agent can do an action displeasing to it self but to arise merely from Acid humors contain'd in the cavity of the stomach which by astriction asperity rosion and fretting of the inmost membrane of the Stomach as if they endeavor'd to draw forth a tincture from it cause it to feel a kind of Vellication or gnawing and to complain to the imagination of the want of that mild sweet and nutritive Succulency that is requisite to mitigate and extinguish that offensive Vellication and to induce complacency in the room of it And these Acid humors in this manner causing a sense of Vellication in the Ventricle seem to be partly the reliques of meat still remaining in the cavity thereof partly the soure Phlegm brought with the arterial bloud into the inmost tunic of it and there separated of both which we shall have occasion ere long to speak more opportunely Mean while having thus concisely proposed to your more judicious examen what seem'd to me most probable concerning the double object of Hunger I haste to the Constitutions of the Stomach in which that offensive sense of want of meat is founded These CONSTITUTIONS are according to the division of the parts of the Ventricle mentioned in my first Lecture either common or proper The Common are 1. The Temperament 2. The firm Tone 3. The Cavity 4. The Asperity of the inmost coat 5. The acute Sensation and 6. The Porose or spongy substance of the same inmost coat of the Ventricle Among these the first place is due to the Temper of the Stomach upon the justice of which the natural vigor of this Faculty of craving meat so necessarily depends that if but the influent temper to praetermitt the insite or native happen to be deficient or depraved the appetite soon comes to be impaired or vitiated accordingly Of this we have an eminent instance in a fever which no sooner invades than it dejects all appetite of meat inducing great thirst in the room of it and the reason seems to be this that by the febrile heat of the bloud brought into the inmost tunic of the stomach by the arteries the acid ferment therein lodged is destroyed For Acids ye know are apt to extinguish thirst and all inflammations of the bloud augment it by overcoming their acidity The second is due to the firm Tone of the membranes and fibres of the Ventricle For if this Eutonia of the whole organ be any way vitiated the appetite of necessity more or less languisheth flaggs and vades because the stomach having its fibres relaxed can neither contract it self enough to embrace the food it receives nor be duely sensible of the complacency thence resulting For both the relaxation and the infirm cohaerence of the tone of any part very much diminish the vigor of it and induce sluggishness and stupidity instead of it How requisite to the excitation of a good appetite the firmness of the tone of the stomach is may be collected not only from the experience of great Drinkers who by excessive distension of the coats by continual soaking the fibres and by diluting and rinsing away the Acidum esurinum as Helmont calls it of the stomach have little or no appetite to wholesom and nutritive meats and at length so ruinc the tone of the stomach that they become insensible of hunger and dye languishing most commonly of Dropsies some of the Lymphaeducts being broken in their bellies or Consumptions from want of nourishment but also from our own observation of the diminution of our hunger in the heats of Summer and the reviving of it in Winter The reason of which remarkable alteration and vicissitude seems to consist in this that in the Summer the whole body being as it were dissolved and enervated by immoderate heat and the spirits continually exhausted by sweats and profuse transpiration the tone of all parts becomes softer and more lax than it ought to be in the state of health and consequently the appetite of the stomach to solid meat dwindles into thirst but in Winter when all parts are constringed and render'd
the same Natural Perception may be and often is by various degrees changed into Sense Now therefore that I may draw all the lines of this Digression quite home to the Centre of my praesent scope that there is such a thing as Natural Feeling or Perception I acknowledge that the name of Natural Perception is more distinctive and therefore more proper I confess I grant also that this discerning faculty is by the immense bounty of the Omnipotent Creator conferr'd upon all the sensile parts of the body and among these upon the stomach in a high degree I farther grant that by virtue of the same the Retentive Faculty of the Stomach may be in some cases much aided and promoved All these things I hold my self obliged to concede What then remains to be the subject of my doubting and suspense Two things there are which yet I can not bring my weak reason to admit though they have been and with strong arguments too asserted expresly by a Man whose doctrin I often follow and whose autority I venerate The First is that not only the sensile parts of Animals but this inanimate yea every single particle of Matter in the Universe is from the Creation endowed with this faculty of Natural Sense or Perception call it what ye please and with its inseparable Adjuncts natural Appetite and Motion For who can believe that any part of this dead body hath a perception of the knife of the Dissector and that the fibres of the flesh suffer as much of irritation from the solution of their continuity now as when the body was animated by a soul and they were invigorated by the heat of the arterial bloud and the influence of the vital spirits Who can be persuaded that a marble pillar when knock'd with a mallet feels as much pain as the limbs of an Animal that is beaten with a cudgel And yet both these things must be true if the supposition of Natural Sense or Perception be so What then shall I do to extricate my thoughts from the perplexing difficulties of this Aenigmatic Paradox My Curiosity urges me to examine them my Understanding is unable to solve them and the Theorem is most noble in it self Wherefore my desire of Knowledge will be alone sufficient to excuse me if despairing of satisfaction from my self I humbly seek it from the Oracle of your more discerning judgement The Other more neerly touching the point in quaestion is this I do not perceive any necessity why Natural Perception should be brought in to concurre with the two newly explain'd Organical Constitutions of the Stomach in which the Retentive Faculty thereof seems to me to be wholly founded For 1 that placid quiet which the Stomach is observ'd to enjoy when satiated with good and wholsom food may arise only from the cessation of the anxiety and trouble it suffer'd from the vellication or gnawing of Hunger the biting Acidity of the Fermentum Esurinum being now blunted by the benign juice of the Aliment newly receiv'd After which the fibres that before were irritated gently and placidly restore themselves to their natural posture as all other Tensil bodies also do and therein attain to quiet and ease So that the Complacency of which the stomach is then sensible seems referrible to the Sense of Touching common to all sensile parts of the body For if Hunger be an ungrateful Sense of emptiness or want of food why should not Satiety be a grateful sensation of the supply of that want since contraries are ever comprehended sub eodem genere 2 But were the Complacency transferr'd from Sense to Natural Perception yet would it not be necessarily consequent that therefore the same is required to consummate the Retentive faculty because usually the meat is retain'd in the stomach a good while some hours after the complacency ceaseth and therefore the Retention seems not to depend upon it And this may be confirm'd from hence that it is observed that by how much more delicate and grateful to the stomach the meat receiv'd is by so much the less while it is therein retain'd Now these are the reasons that withhold me from assenting to that opinion which placeth the Retentive power of the stomach chiefly in the Natural Perception of it But whether they be of weight enough to justifie my suspense or not I leave to your determination and here turn over leaf to a new lesson viz. The CONCOCTIVE Faculty of the Ventricle WHICH according to the order of Nature is next to be consider'd for all food is swallow'd receiv'd and then retain'd by the stomach in order to its concoction or conversion into Chyle That this operation is not organic as we have shewn all the praecedent to be but wholly Similar is sufficiently evident from hence that the Chyle it self when confected is similar and all the Actions by which it is made Chyle are so too nor dos the Cavity of the Stomach contribute more to this work than a pot doth to the boyling of the flesh that is put in it over the fire Most true it is nevertheless that the Organ in which the work of Chylification is perform'd is principally the Ventricle in which the Concoctive power is most vigorose and to which Nature hath committed the most difficult part of the whole operation I say Principally the Ventricle because I would not wholly deprive the Gutts of their right to the like power of changing aliments into Chyle though they do it less efficaciously than the stomach and as it were at second hand that is if any part of the Chyle happen to descend into them not perfectly elaborate they farther concoct it finishing the work the stomach had begun Hence it is worthy our observation that the Chyle taken in by Venae Lacteae immediately from the stomach is thinner and more spirituose than that imbibed from the Gutts and that receiv'd from the superior Gutts thinner than that exported out of the inferior and in fine the thickest is convey'd out of the Colon and intestinum rectum So that we may conclude the stomach is the primary seat or place of Chylification and the Gutts the secondary Having thus easily found what kind of operation the conversion of meat and drink into Chyle is and where it is performed we are in the next place diligently to inquire 1. What are the capital Differences of Aliments to be concocted in the stomach 2. What various Mutations or Alterations the food ought to undergo before it can be brought to the requisite perfection of Chyle and 3. What are the Causes by which those Mutations are effected And these are the three general heads of this our disquisition As for the FIRST viz. the differences of Aliments to be digested 't is well known that all our food is either Meat or Drink solid or liquid and all our drink either spirituose or watery That all Potulent liquors require less coction in the stomach than solid meats is not to be
able after all their pains and taedious processes to draw any thing from thence but a certain salt spirit not much different from the spirits of Urine of Harts-horn or of Sal Ammoniac unless that perhaps it was somwhat more subtile less acrimonious and less ingrate And certain therefore it is as I before affirm'd that whatsoever of Acid salt hath not been actually converted into salt in the stomach is soon after when the Chyle arrives at the Gutts changed into Animal Salt no such thing as Vegetable Salt being to be found in any part of any living creature ¶ Having now at length with more of haste perhaps than of satisfaction to my Auditors run through all the general Differences of Aliments to be concocted and all the various Alterations they undergo in the stomach before they can be brought to the perfection of good and profitable Chyle we come next to the Third Head of our praesent Disquisition viz. the CAUSES of those Alterations WHICH though many and of various kinds may nevertheless be commodiously enough reduced to two general Classes or Orders viz. such as are Foreign or Extra-advenient to and such as are Indigenary or Inbred in the stomach To the First classis belong all things that any way conduce to the promotion of Concoction either by praevious Alteration of the Aliments or by fortifying the stomach Of those that remotely conduce to the work of Concoction only by Praeparation of the food some correct the Crudity of it by the help of fire namely by boyling roasting frying or baking others render it more mild and tender by maceration in brines lixivia's pickles vinegre and the like others make the Aliments more familiar by way of hastning their Maturation and others again intenerate and dispose them to dissolution by mixture of some wholsom and agreeable Ferment Where it may be observed that whatsoever Aliments whether solid as bread or liquid as wine beer ale hydromel c. that have undergone Fermentation before they are receiv'd into the stomach invite other Aliments with which they are therein commixt to fermentation Hence it is that good wine strong beer vinegre bread made light by leaven and the like help very much to digestion Those that do so by corroboration of the stomach are Peptic or Digestive Remedies as mints roses wormwood Aromatics c. But all these of both sorts being only Accessories and forein require not to be farther prosecuted in this place The Inbred Causes of Concoction are either Instruments generated in the stomach or the Constitutions of the stomach in which the Faculty of Concocting is founded 1. The Instruments are the Ferments contein'd in the stomach four in number whereof two are Principal and the other two only Adjuvant The Adjuvant or less powerful are the Humor Salivalis and the Acid Phlegm of the stomach both which help somwhat toward the inteneration of the meat But because they help but little in comparison of the other two I content my self with the bare mention of them en passant The More powerful are the Acid reliques of the former meal which tho' more efficacious than both the Adjuvant ferments are yet in comparison of the grand one less considerable and therefore I may well be excused if I pass them also over in silence and the proper Ferment of the stomach which being the Principal instrument of Concoction deserves to be particularly consider'd The origin and nature of this admirable dissolving Ferment the only true Alkahest in nature having been first investigated not many years past by the great industry of the learned and judicious Moebius and professedly proved by convincing experiments and observations in a prolix dissertation conteined in his Book de Fundament Medicinae and since that time much illustrated by our happy Dr. Glisson de ventric intestin cap. 20. all that remains for me to do concerning it is only to recall to your memory the most remarkable heads of those things ye have read in those discourses by giving you a Breviary of them This therefore I will do and in as few words as can with reason be expected This Ferment then is nothing else but the spirituose and saline effluvia stirr'd up by the vital motion of the arterial bloud effused out of the arteries into the cavity of the stomach and gutts but chiefly of the stomach and therein condensed again into a sharp penetrating and dissolving liquor apt to dissolve the solid meat and to cause such a benign fermentation as tends not to volatilization but only to Fusion of the same and in fine acting upon it not by open force or violent invasion but after the manner of Contagiose ferments rather by clancular insinuation and mixing it self first with the saline and spirituose parts and then with the grosser and less exsoluble In this concise Abridgement I have I confess omitted two Positions both zealously asserted by the later of these two excellent Authors out of whose doctrine I abstracted it One is that that part of the blood which is by the Coeliac and two Mesenteric arteries dispensed to the stomach and gutts chiefly to the inmost coat of them is somewhat more salt and sharp than the blood distributed to other parts of the body The Other is that the Saline and spirituose parts of the Meat newly admitted into the stomach perceiving that they are ill lodg'd and that the Ferment with which they there meet is really semblable or like to them and with all more noble as retaining some reliques of vitality with which it had so lately been ennobled while it pass'd through the heart and arteries do easily admit embrace and conjoyn themselves with it But I declare withal that I omitted these Positions not from inadvertency nor for brevity fake but only because I doubt of the verity of them For the first supposes Similar Attraction or mutual coition of things alike ob similitudinem naturae which yet I do not find my self obliged to grant And the other depends upon the Hypothesis of Natural Perception which is not yet establish'd beyond disputation However it seems to me sufficiently probable that this dissolving Ferment is peculiar to and generated in the stomach because nothing like it is to be found in any other part of the whole body that to the constitution of it is required a concurse of both salt and sulphureous spirits such are the vital spirits themselves but chiefly of Salt than which nothing is more sharp penetrating and dissolving and that therefore it may be call'd as Moebius named it Sal spiritibus impragnatum acre ac pungens or as Dr. Glisson Fermentum Ventriculi fusorium feu principale coctionis instrumentum because it doth not only efficaciously dissolve the solid parts of the food but also give it the first degree of Assiimilation to the nature of the Animal out of whose blood the ferment it self is derived Which may be one reason why the same Aliment receives a divers praeparation in
to arrive at the Period of his own within few Hours after ¶ PRAELECTIO V. Of Fevers IT is the custom of Mathematicians as ye most Candid Auditors well know when from a Series of Propositions premised and verified they have inferred the conclusion they sought to add as overplus certain useful Theorems or consectaneous Speculations by the Graecs called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Consectaria sive Coroltaria by the Latins the knowledg of which is many times of equal moment with that of the Verity on which they depend Give me leave then I beseech you so far to imitate this Method of those great Masters in the art of Reasoning rightly as from my discourse on Saturday last in the morning concerning the Primordia perpetual Source and circular race of Life to deduce a few Pathological Consectaries such as may perhaps afford some glimses of Light toward the discovery and nature and causes of a certain Malady which is of all others incident to Mans frail Body the most common most grievous and most dangerous And this Leave I with the greater confidence ask because I intend not to abuse it by digressing impertinently from either my present Subject or my Duty For the Subject of my Speculation designed is the same with that of my antecedent disquisition viz. the Blood and to find out the most probable Causes and reason of curing great Diseases is the principal scope and end of all our Enquiries as well Physiological as Anatomical Of which none can be ignorant who hath perused that little but oraculous Book of Hippocrates de Prisca Medicina where he teacheth that it is the great Duty of all Physicians who desire to render themselves worthy of that honourable appellation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not by discours alone but also by their Works and real succoring of the Sick to be solicitous about investigating the true Nature Causes and Remedies of Maladies above all things Nor is it new to find in the Writings of Anatomists Pathological reflexions subjoyned to the description of the part which is known to be the primary Seat of the preternatural Assections incident thereunto Secure then that what I have resolved with my self at this time to speak cannot in the end be justly esteemed a Parergon or beside the principal purpose I have taken in hand and conceiving great Hope both from the frequency and from the benign Aspect of this learned Assembly that hitherto my dulness hath not been able wholly to overcome your Patience I will presume ye are not unwilling to grant my so equitable Petition In my last Exercitation I endevored to evince as ye may be pleased to remember that the Vital Heat or Motion of the Blood doth formally consist in a certain expansive luctation of the spirituose Particles thereof with the less moveable or unactive repulsed and prevailing alternately but mild amicable benign and conducing to the exaltation of all the faculties and Uses of the Blood Now I come to add that it is not only possible but that it often happens that this Vital Motion although proceeding only from the Spirits that conserve and rule the Blood is by causes beside the institute of Nature invading it perturbed interrupted perverted and sometimes also wholly extinguished the vital Oeconomy being thereby sooner or later utterly subverted Of this we have instances almost innumerable Nor is there any one kind of preternatural Causes assignable by which Nature may not be impeded in her production of this Vital Motion and more or less perturbed as we cannot but observe it within our selves to come to pass sometimes from the immoderate Heat of the Aire surrounding us as in Ephemera sometimes from Meats and Drinks potentially too Hot as in Surfets and drunkenness sometimes from vehement Passions of the Mind as in anger Fear Grief c. Sometimes from a fermentation of the Blood as in putrid Fevers sometimes from venenate effluvia of Bodies as in pestilential and contagious Fevers sometimes from a simple solution of continuity of the Parts as in Wounds so that in fine to enumerate all the various causes by the hostility of which this Life conserving work of the vital Spirits may be hindred and perverted is a thing extremely difficult if not plainly impossible But in all these so various cases this is worthy to be noted as a general verity that the vital Spirits of the Blood are always preternaturally affected and that the disorder from thence emergent ought to be imputed to a p. n. Cause Every thing then that pollutes the Blood and that putts Nature to an effort or essay to separate and eject it from thence as alien and hostile is wont more or less according to the diversity of its Nature and Malice to impugn and repress the vital Motion of the Blood But nothing hath been observed to do it either more frequently or more contumaciously than impurities arising from Crude Humours congested in the Mass of Blood which cannot be separated and extirpated without previous Concoction or Digestion For these constituting a certain peculiar Inquinament or Pollution of the Blood put on the nature and acquire to themselves the efficacy of a Ferment not indeed such as the Leven of Bread or as the Yest of Ale and Beer but such that being in our Bodies mixt with the Blood which perpetually conceives new vital Heat in itself produceth the like commotions therein that those domestic Ferments do in their respective Subjects and may therefore be not unfitly called a Ferment according to the Name given to it by all Modern Physicians For it causeth a manifest Tumult or intestine War in the Blood after this manner The inquinament of the Blood by reason of the crudity and viscidity of its parts impugnes and hinders the benign expansive Motion of the Spirits in which I have declared the Generation of the vital Heat of it to consist and the Spirits on the contrary by their natural tendency to expand themselves oppose that repressive Force and strive to defend themselves from oppression producing by their energy a continuation of the Mication of the Blood imperfect indeed and mixt with Fermentation but the best they are able till they have gained the Victory to produce So that the Fermentation of the Blood in Fevers seems to proceed not from the impurities mixt with the Blood alone but partly from them and partly from Nature i. e. from the vital Spirits conserving the vitality of the Blood For while these are impugned checkt and hindred by those the Motion resulting from that conflict is indeed a certain Mication of the Blood but tumultuous violent unequal and interrupted with little Bubles and Froth I say therefore that this civil War in the Blood as it includes a certain Vital though imperfect and irregular Mication of the Blood cannot be denied so far forth to be the work of Nature but as that Mication is supposed to be tumultuose seditiose hostil and unequal it must be in that respect
the product of the Fermentation arising from the inquinament or corruption of the Blood This Fermentation certainly is the very same thing that the Antient Physicians meant by the Putrefaction of the Blood in Fevers calling for distinction sake all such Fevers which they conceived to arise from thence Putrid Fevers For it is not credible that Men of so acute Judgment and so curiose in observing as their Writings declare them to have been by the Word Putredo intended to signifie that sordid and noysom Corruption observed in dead and rotting Carcases which is absolutely inconsistent with the Principles of Life but only a more mild manner of dissolution of the Blood and such as doth impugn and hinder but not wholly suffocate the vital Expansion of it And of this we are certain that they used to affix the Epithet Putrid to whatsoever doth by a swift Motion degenerate into the nature of Pus or Quitter Which is generated either slowly by degrees by a gentle and long process and also without tumult as when any Humour is without a Fever digested and converted into purulent matter or speedily and with great Tumult and disorder of the State of the Body as in putrid Fevers when the Materia Febrilis or inquinament of the Blood hastens to Concoction and the Disease runs through all its Times quickly and swiftly Of these two so different ways of producing Purulent Matter in the Body the former which is alway simple and without a Fever is called by the Antients 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Maturation or Ripening of the Matter the Later which is alwaies with a Fever is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Putredo Whence that Aphorism of Hippocrates lib. 2. aph 47. Dum pus confititur dolores atque febres incidunt magis quam jam confecto In their Sense therefore Putredo is the very motion of the matter of a Fever tending to purulency and this Motion is the very same that most of the Neoterics Name Fermentation For in Fevers it is the Fermentation that brings the impurities to digestion or Concoction and disposes them to separation from the Blood and therefore the Putrid Matter and the Fermenting Matter signify one and the same thing and by consequence the Materia Febrilis and Fermentum Febrile are but two different Names of the Cause whence the Fever or fermentation of the Blood comes Now if this be granted to be consentaneous to Reason and Experience as to me it seem's to be We need no longer amuse our selves with inquiring either wherein the formal reason of a putrid Fever consists or how those two Enimies Life and a Fever can subsist together in the same Subject the Blood for what I have said may serve to expound both those riddles Confiding therefore in the firmness of this Foundation I design to erect thereupon a short Theory of the nature causes differences and principal Symptoms of Fevers and that according to the Model left to us by that most accurate Surveyor of Natures Works Dr. Fr. Glisson in his last incomparable Book reputing it well worth my diligence to paraphrase upon the Text of so great an Author And because to Physicians accurately investigating the differences of preternatural causes inducing Fevers there occur to be considered more than one kind as of Crudities so likewise of Ferments that I may not leave myself sticking in the shallows of Ambiguties 't is requisite that I clearly and distinctly explain first what I understand by CRUDE HUMORS commixt with the Blood Which I take to be generally the Material Causes of putrid Fevers and then what I mean by the Fermentum FEBRILE which I suppose to be the Efficient cause of them for by this means the Fogg of Equivocations being discussed we shall by a clearer light of distinct notions contemplate the nature of the things sought after As to the FIRST thereof viz. the CRUDITY of Humours 't is well known that Physicians observing two kinds of Concoction or Digestion performed by Nature in the Body viz. One of what is natural and familiar of the Aliment requisite to the continual reparation of the Body which they call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the other of what is preternatural and hurtful as the material cause of Diseases which is named for distinction sake 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 have accordingly constituted two sorts of Crudity one Alimenti the other Inquinamenti Of which the former that respects nutrition is ordinary arising for the most part from some error committed in the use of the six Nonnaturals and consisting chiefly in this that the Spirits of our Food are either not sufficiently excited or if excited yet not sufficiently tamed and subdued by the concoctive faculty of the Stomach to serve to promote the vital mication of the Blood The Later viz. Cruditas inquinamenti is in the general any pollution or corruption of the Blood whatsoever arising from defect of its due preparation and fitness to admit the vital Mication And this being the Mother of Fevers is that intended by Hippocrates in that most remarkable Aphorism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Concocta medicamento purgare ac movere oportet non cruda This Crudity is subdivided into two sorts one Simple which consisting only in defect of due preparation of the Blood may be corrected per pepasmum or maturation necessarily previous to Evacuation either natural or artificial the other Malignant which always includes certain seminal Reliques of some precedent form of the matter mixt with the Blood highly Hostile to the vital Spirits and incapable of correction or mitigation and many times of expulsion Now from this Malignant crudity of matter mixt with the Blood ariseth a Malignant Fever and from the simple Crudity comes a Putrid Of both which we shall speak more copiously when we come to consider the differences of Fevers As to the SECOND viz. the difference of FERMENTS incident to our Bodies I advertise that they also may be as to my present disquisition commodiously referred to two kinds Of which the one may be called Fermentum irritans because it doth primarily by it self and directly irritate the vital Spirits of the Blood to begin an extraordinary commotion and seditious Tumult with the grosser parts of it and to endevor to deliver themselves from confinement and by dissolving the common Bond of the whole Mass thereof to fly away And under this kind are comprehended all fermenting mixtures abounding with saline Spirits highly volatile and not easily tameable by the digestive faculty of the Stomack among which the Stum of Wine is eminent The other deserves to be named Fermentum Opprimens because it at first and immediately oppresses the vital Spirits of the Blood impugning their expansive Motion tho afterward secondarily and by accident it irritates them to a Pneumatic Fermentation not to dissolve the whole mixture thereof and so to make way for themselves to fly away but only to attenuate discuss eject and exterminate the
Ferment that by clogging and oppressing them hinders their spontaneous expansion and the vital Mication of the Blood thereon depending And this to me seems to be that kind of Ferment by which a Fermentation of the Blood is wont to be excited in putrid Fevers and which for that very cause ought to be nominated Fermentum Febrile It seem's also to consist of any crude humor whatsoever commixt with the Mass of Blood For this doubtless is that Crudity which Hippocrates in the newly cited Aphorism forbids to be importunely attempted by purging Medicaments until Nature hath mitigated tamed and prepared it for evacuation by gradual digestion Of which Counsel though many reasons have been by the learned Commentators on his Aphorisms chiefly by Cardan alleged yet the most credible and therefore the most considerable seems to be this That Nature hath provided no Organs for the Separation or Secretion of such Crude Humors from the Blood the Spirits of which are not yet exhausted Most true indeed and evident it is that Nature has with amirable Wisdom and Providence taken care to preserve the Blood pure and undefiled and to that end framed and most advantagiously placed three conspicuous Secretory Organs for the purifaction of it viz. the Liver Kidneys and Stomach with the conjoin'd Intestines and yet it is no less true that none of these is by her primary institution destined to separate and drein from the Mass of Blood any matter yet remaining in the state of Crudity or no yet despoiled of its Spirits but all three ordained lest the Blood after it hath spent and consumed the sweet and profitable Spirits of the Aliment and becomes thereby effete and ungenerose should be longer detained in the Body and like a dead Body bound to a living pollute and infect the Blood newly made of Chyle lately imported and replenish'd with sweet and useful Spirits Now the Humors here by us supposed to be both the antecedent and conjunct Causes of Fevers are not such as have already been spoiled of their Spirits and apt to turn vappid but such as abound with Spirits yet unvolatilized and infest to the vital Mication of the Blood For the matter not sufficiently digested altered and elaborate in the Stomach becomes at length apt to produce Fevers in this respect only that the Spirits contained in it are either not sufficiently excited or not sufficiently subdued and tamed Likewise the matter that grows crude and apt to generate Fevers either from defect of due eventilation by insensible transpiration or from want of free motion is not vitiose because the Spirits of it are already dissipated but only because they are contrary to the institute of Nature detained and because they at the same time impede and somewhat suppress the vital Mication of the Blood In fine the Seminia heterogenea unalterable reliques of some precedent form remaining in the crude Matter commixt with the Blood cause a Malignant Fever not because the Spirits of that matter have been already exhaled but because they are hostile highly infense and pernicious to the Vital Spirits and incapable of being tamed We have reason then to believe that the material causes of Fevers are not the dead useless and excrementitious parts of the Blood not the Phlegm not the Bile nor that thin Humor consisting of the Serum Salt and Tartar of the Blood which is separated in the Kidneys for all these have their peculiar Secretory Organs by which they are daily separated and carried off nor do they require any other Preparation to their Separation but what consists in their transmutation into those Humors in Specie Wich is done only by the gradual deflagration of the Blood by which the vital Heat is sustained For hence it is that in tract of Time the nobler parts of the vital Juice are dissipated and consumed and the remaining Parts which they had before kept united divided into various parties and becoming excrementitious pass some into Bile some into Phlegm and more into the matter of Urine and all these now unprofitable Humors being brought together with the Blood to the respective Organs in which they ought to be separated are there by way of percolation secerned and by their proper excretory Vessels carried off and ejected If this be admitted for true what then are we to think of the long-lived and even to this Day flourishing Doctrine of the Antients that attributes tertian Fevers to Choler Quotidian to Phlegm and Quartan to Melancholy I answer with Dr. Glisson who in all arguments endevor'd as far as his Devotion to Truth would permit him to sustain the auctority of the Antients that those Humors were or at least might be taken either for the reliques of the Stale and vapid Blood or for Humors analogous to them The Reliques of the Blood are as was just now said resolved into Bile Phlegm and Urine in the last of which are contained four other kinds of Excrements viz. the potulent matter Salt Serum and a certain earthly liquamen commonly distinguished by the name of Tartar But as for Melancholy no place is to be found for it among the reliques or stale and rejected parts of the Blood For in the whole Body we find no peculiar Organ provided by Nature for the Secretion reception and exclusion of any such Humor and therefore saving the respects and veneration due to those Fathers of our Art the interest of Truth which is still more sacred and venerable obliges us to affirm that they erred most egregiously when they assigned that Office to the Spleen The Humors Analogous to the newly enumerated Reliques of the Blood are signified by the same Names in particular the viscid insipid and white part of the Blood is called Pituita or Phlegm the hot drie acrimonious and pungent or corroding Bilis or Choler the cold drie blackish and adust Melancholy if at least any such Humor may be admitted to lye concealed in the Mass of Blood For we must confess we usurp more than a Physical License when we call this an Analogous Humor to which nothing that holds any the least resemblance or analogie can be any where in the whole Body found and yet nevertheless it may be lawful to say that the Analogie that some parts of the Blood seem to have to that fictitious Humor which the Antients imagined to be separated and received by the Spleen may serve to excuse us if out of compliance with custom and the vulgar Doctrine of the Schools we retain the denomination while we rectify the Notion of Melancholy For though the Analogatum be wanting yet if in reality a thing respondent thereto hath existence in Nature the supposed Analogy is enough to justify the appellation Considering this I assert that in the Mass of Blood are most commonly contained 1 A sharp pungent or corrosive Serum such as is wont to be cast out by exsudation in an Erysipelas and in the little Bladders or Blisters raised by Epispastic emplasters which
fermentation upon the Blood As for the OTHER viz. Where the same crude Matter is wont to be congested and to lye in ambush till that time if the whole matter of the precedent Paroxysm be spent and consumed in the Paroxysm as hath been supposed then it necessarily follows that the matter of the subsequent Paroxysm must either be generated anew in the time intervenient betwixt the two Fits or lie conceal'd somewhere in the Body either in the Vessels carrying the Blood or out of them from whence as from its Fomes it may after certain intervals of Time sally forth to infect the Blood and invade the vital Spirits For both these cannot be true and therefore it remains to be inquired which of the two is most likely to be so My Opinion is that the matter of every subsequent Paroxysm is not generated anew and my Reasons are these 1 So soon as any Paroxysm is ended the very essence of the Fever Ceases for that time and the Blood quickly returns to an Apyrexia Now if the Cause be extirpated together with the Disease nothing will be left remaining in the Body to continue it and by consequence every new Paroxysm will be a new Fever which no experienced Physician who hath observed the Disease to be of the same genius or nature from the first Fit to the last will easily be brought to grant 2 The same may be confirmed by this that intermittent Fevers even in poor Country People frequently run through alll their times regularly by degrees ascending to their State and thenceforth gradually tending to their Declination when no Physician is called to Succour Nature So that merely from diligent Observation of the motion of the Fever a certain prognostication of the State and final cessation of it may be collected which would be impossible if the matter of the Disease were every Day generated de novo for who could foresee when that new Generation would Cease 3 The cause of the Fever coming ab extra is accidental and depends on a less or greater Error committed in Diet and is constituted extra Febris essentiam nor can any indication be from thence desumed And our Dr. Glisson affirms that he knew a Man who being of a strong Constitution and afflicted with a Tertian Intermittent obstinately abstained from all Meat and Drink from one Fit to another and yet could not thereby elude the return of his Fever It may be therefore with good reason inferred that putrid Fevers have an internal Focus some where in the Body whence the material Cause of them breaking forth and gathering fresh Forces invades and irritates the Vital Spirits again and again even till the Fomes be utterly exhausted and consumed There are I confess many great Wits who in every intermittent Fever seek for a peculiar Fomes or Seat of the Cause I confess also that sometimes such a particular and partial Fomes may be found as for Instance in the Stomach or in the Pancreas or in the Mesentry and other Parts of the Abdomen and an inflamation of the Lungs is in some sort the Fomes of a Peripneumonia an inflamation of the Pleura the Fomes of a Pleurisy and sic de multis aliis partibus So that itcannot be denyed but both intermittent and continual Fevers may arise from particular Seats and that an Aposteme chiefly an Empyema may minister Fewel to a Fever yea more that an inflamation repercu'st from the outward parts and a Gangrene in any the remotest Member of the Body may produce a continual Fever by sending forth corrupt matter to pollute and infect the Blood All this I say must be confessed And yet nevertheless it must be acknowledged that besides these particular Fomites of Fevers there is a certain General one common to all putrid Fevers and this general Fomes I hold to be the very Parenchyma of the Parts nourished out of impure Juices For this FOMES is of all others hitherto supposed most consistent with the Circuition of the Blood by which it is commodiously carried to all Parts and diffused universally whereas other impurities can scarcely be so accumulated in the Solid Parts but they must when extravasated obstruct the free course of the Blood If they be supposed to stick and be congested in the capillary Vessels or in the inconspicuous Pores of the Parts they must be a manifest and intollerable Obstacle to the pertransition of the Blood If out of the Vessels they stagnate in the habit of the Parts they must induce not a Fever but a Cachexia or an Anasarcha Compelled therefore we are to fly to the very Parenchyma of the Parts which in every putrid Fever are necessarily fused or melted by degrees and being fused as necessarily become Fewel to continue the Fever For in continual Fevers the substance of the Parts amass'd out of Crude and impure Chyle is continually melted and so maintains the fermentation without intermission until all the Fewel be consumed and then the Fever is extinguished But in intermittent the same impurities are melted by turns or Intervals and in every Paroxysm some portion of them is colliquated into a kind of Sanies or putrid Matter which being remixt with the Blood becomes in a Tertian the Fewel of a Paroxysm to recur on the third Day from its Fusion in a Quartan of a Paroxysm to invade on the fourth in a Quotidian of a Fit to return on the next Day sic de caeteris And as to the Duplication and Triplication of these intermittent Fevers 't is probable that when of a Simple Tertian is made a double one the Simple is not the direct Cause of the double but the later arises from Causes like to those from which the former took its beginning So that a double Tertian may be rightly enough accounted to be two single Tertians alternately succeding and complicated with each other And the same mutatis mutandis may be said with equal congruity also of the origin of a double and treble Quartan But there remains yet another Difficulty greater than either of the two precedent viz. concerning the Suspension of the Action of the crude Matter to the time of the Paroxysm in which it is actuated That the State of which Question may be the better understood let us for instance Sake suppose that in a double Tertian A. B. C. D. are four distinct crude Matters melted and set afloate in the Mass of Blood in four successive Paroxysms Let us suppose also that this Fever first invaded the Patient upon Munday and that in the first Fit it melted so much of the crude Parenchyma of the solid Parts as may suffice to produce a new Fit on Wednesday following Let us suppose farther that on Tuesday another Tertian began and during that first Fit in like manner melted so much of the Crude Parenchyma as may be sufficient to raise a second Fit on Thursday following These things being supposed the Question is why the crude Matter B. melted on Tuesday is
not dissipated or corrected on the Wednesday following when the crude Matter A. causing a Fit is by the Fermentation rarefied and expelled by Sweat Why I say the Matter B. being remixt with the Blood all Wednesday when the Matter A. was fermented is not by that Fermentation corrected and dissipated at the same time but suffered to lye dormant and cause a Fit on Thursday following To untie this Knot therefore I say that the febrile Fermentation doth not much alter any crude Matter that doth not yet actually impede the vital motion of the Blood For the Fermentation is regulated by the vital Spirits which in the Case proposed chiefly oppose and dissipate the Matter A. which alone by its clamminess actually hinders their expansive Motion Hence it is that in the Fermentation hapning on Wednesday the vital Spirits are not much offended with the new Matter B. then melted and sloating in the Blood because it is not actually Febrile nor doth it oppress them so as to incite them to vindicate their Liberty by their expansive Motion And thus the difficulty seems to be solved ¶ WHAT hath been said a little before of the general Fomes of all putrid Fevers as well continual as intermittent viz. that it is in the very Parenchyma or Substance of the solid parts amassed out of crude or impure Chyle may perhaps to some of my Auditors long accustomed to the vulgar Doctrine of Physicians concerning the Genealogy of Fevers seem to be only precarious and as easily denied as affirmed because it still remains doubtful how Chyle crude or impure can be instead of good and laudable Succus Nutritins or Aliment converted into the substance of the solid parts To obviate this their doubting therefore before it settle into a prejudice more difficult to be removed it concerns me to assert that there is many times an imperfect Nutrition or Vegetation and Augmentation as well as a perfect observ'd in the Bodies of Men and consequently that the Succus Nutritius or proxime Aliment of all parts is either pure i. e. perfectly concocted or impure i. e. imperfectly concocted Whence it comes that the Bodies of some Men are even vulgarly said to be more or less pure than those of others Those few who are so happy as to have Bodies in all parts pure and clean from crude and vitiose humours do not only from the right use of the six Non-naturals enjoy perfect health but have this farther advantage that their solid parts not being augmented by the accretion of crude matter they carry in them neither any Febrile Fomes congested in the habit of their solid parts nor the least disposition to any other Disease When on the contrary impure Bodies either through intemperance or too full Diet Surfeits Compotations and other Debauches and Disorders or from want of exercise to correct and dissipate the crudities they have congested are cramm'd and plump'd up with impure nourishment and perhaps also augmented to an unprofitable and unwieldy Bulk These then must of necessity abound with a great stock of crude Matter accumulated chiefly in the Substance of their solid Parts Which when a Fever comes from what cause soever are melted by degrees and dayly afford new Matter to serve as prepared Fewel to the long and dangerous Fever whether continual or intermittent But Bodies clean and pure though perhaps liable to be surprised with a light feverish Distemper are in much less Danger from thence because their solid Parts have not been imperfectly recruited with impure Nourishment and consequently the Liquamen of them is not so Crude as to suffice to renew often or long continue the Fermentation From the Testimony of our very Senses it is evident that in all putrid Fevers the parts of the Body are more or less extenuated and colliquated and that the Crude Liquamina of them are the material Causes of new Exacerbations in continual Fevers and of new Paroxysms in intermittent is highly consentaneous to reason Hence it is that Men recovering from long Fevers if they manage their Health circumspectly and with temperance attain to a renovation as it were of their Youth because all the substance of their Parts that was amass'd out of Crude and impure Matter being by the Fever consumed their Bodies are now repaired with pure and convenient Juices such as abound with sweet Spirits duly exalted and excited by Concoction in the Stomach Hence also we are led to a clear understanding of the true Reason of that Aphorism commended to our Observation by Hippocrates Si febricitanti nec omnino leviter suo in statu maneat corpus nihilque concedat morbo aut hoc etiam plus aequo gracilescat calamitosum hoc enim aegri infirmitatem significat illud vero diuturnitatem morbi For the prognostic holds certain ratione tum causae tum signi If the habit of the Body be not extenuated in proportion to the Violence or duration of the Fever the Cause must lye either in the abundance or in the contumacy that is the great viscidity or clamminess of the crude Matter congested and affixt to the Parenchyma of the Parts and therefore an observing Physician may from thence safely predict that the Fever will prove of long continuance at best if not fatal in the end On the other side if the extenuation be too great it must come from the great force of the heat or fermentation in the Blood that dissipates all things not only the crude Matter preexistent in the habit of the Parts but even the vital Spirits themselves and the insite Spirits that being intimately united with the Vital should reinvigorate the Parts with Life and conserve them And therefore such impetuous Extenuation is likewise both cause and signe of extreme Calamity Exhaustis enim supra modum spiritibus partibus Solidis omnis ratio pepasmi desideratur All these Reasons duely consider'd it must be granted that Bodies cannot possibly continue in all points pure and clean if they be nourish'd with impure or crude Juices Sound indeed and healthy they may be said to be at present because they seem to foster no proxime Cause of Sickness discernable by a Physician and yet nevertheless since they carry about Crudities secretly congested in the very substance of the solid Parts which by occasion of any light feverish Distemper that would not otherwise last above a Day or two may be melted and remixt with the Blood and long protract that Distemper we are obliged to acknowledg that such Bodies are really foul or impure and contain in them a Disposition to a Fever more or less remote Otherwise it will follow that all Bodies actually sound are in respect of the habit of their Parts either equally disposed or equally indisposed to Fevers and to the continuation of them than which nothing certainly can be more false For have we not observed frequently that Fevers as well continual as intermittent have in the beginning appear'd mild and gentle so long as
if I subjoyn a brief Therapeutic Corollary pertinent to my precedent discourse and useful to Younger Students in Medicine for whose instruction chiefly it was that the wise and prudent Authors of the Statutes of this our so worthily renowned Colledge first instituted and ordained Anatomic Lectures to be therein read by the learned Fellows thereof whensoever it should seem fit to the venerable President I will therefore do my devoir to explicate wherein chiefly consists that Pepasmus or Concoction of crude Humors which Nature and her great Minister Hippocrates require to their opportune Evacuation in putrid Fevers and by what kinds of Remedies the same may be best assisted and advanced For these things being well understood will afford much of Light toward the direction of the younger Sons of Art in the true and most rational method of curing Fevers in which no error can be little no caution too great I begin from that never to be forgotten precept of the Divine old Man afore recited 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Concocta medicamento purgare oportet ac movere non cruda neque ineunte morbo nisi materia turgeat To which Seneca seems to have had respect when he said in morbis nihil est magis periculosum quà m immatura medicina and Livy when he affirmed Medicos plus interdum quiete quà m movendo agendo proficere The Concoction or digestion here meant is by Hippocrates expressed sometimes by the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sometimes by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to contradistinguish it from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which properly signifies the digestion of Aliment as I have before advertised and according to the general Notion of all learned Physicians Antient and Modern it is eorum quae sunt in corpore praeter naturam ad moderatam secuturae expulsioni percommodam temperiem deductio In which Sense Duretus the most faithful interpreter of the Oracle of Cous expounds that place Lib. 1. Epidem Anutii Foesii edit Pag. 365. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 eorum quae exeunt concoctiones spectandas esse Upon which Galen copiously commenting gives this memorable definition of the thing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nempe coctio est quaedam eorum quoe sunt praeter naturam morbi maturatio And most rightly For the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was properly used by the Graecians to express the ripeness of the Fruits of Trees by which they are advanced from the State of Crudeness or immaturity to that of maturity or perfection and metaphorically to signify that maturity of the matter of Diseases which Nature by degrees induces in order to the seasonable and beneficial expulsion of it when she attempts a Crisis by ways most convenient Not that this Maturation is always to be expected in acute Diseases For we are to remember there are two sorts of Crudity of Causes apt to induce Fevers one capable of being brought to moderation and ripeness as that of the Blood in a Phlegmon of the phlegm in a Quotidian of Choler in a Tertian c. Another incapable of correction and mitigation as the Febrile Ferment that causes Malignant and Pestilential Fevers which being by its seminal Nature and unalterable Form pernicious to the very principles of Life in Man is sometimes by the force of Nature expelled and utterly exterminated out of the Body but never can be so changed and brought into subjection as to be made less hostile to the vital Spirits that conserve the Blood And therefore in such Fevers wise Physicians are not wont to stay expecting Maturation of the Poyson mixt with and fermenting the Blood in the mean time losing the Opportunities of relieving Nature by proper Alexiterial and Sudorific remedies To come then to the Marrow of the Question proposed Considering 1 That the Crudity of Humors inducing Fevers simply putrid consisteth only in this that the Spirits lodged in them are not sufficiently educed excited and prepared so as to be fit to promote the vital mication of the Blood 2 that all Fevers are essentially founded in the fermentation of the Blood and 3 That the vital Motion or Heat of the Blood is always more or less impeded and perturbed and often utterly extinguisht by that Fermentation considering these things I say t is not difficult thence to infer that the Pepasmus or Concoction requisite in all Fevers simply putrid i. e. not Malignant must consist chiefly in three things è diametro opposite to those now mentioned namely 1 In the Dissipation and Consumption of the crude Spirits mixt with the Blood 2 In the Moderation of the Fermentation begun and 3 In the Conservation and Corroboration of the vital Powers And these certainly are the three principal Scopes to which a Physician ought to direct his Counsels in the cure of putrid Fevers and which for their great importance require to be singly explain'd To the first of these principal Scopes viz. the Dissipation and absumption of crude Spirits and requisite eventilation of the Blood by them inquinated we may most commodiously attain by fasting at least by a thin Diet by Remedies extenuating acid predatory and conducing to leanness by Diaphoretics Sudorifics and by letting of Blood For 1 Fasting tends directly to dissipation of the crude Spirits because the Spirits if not by intervals recruited out of new supplies of Aliment must necessarily be soon exhausted and resolved into Air. But no mortal being able long to abstain from all sorts of Meat and Drink or to endure absolute fasting we are therefore compell'd to substitute a thin and spare Diet in the place of strict abstinence for the most part thin Broths made of things moystning cooling not prone to corruption subacid and of easie digestion To these 2 are added moderate and grateful Acids apt to attenuate resolve and dissipate the Crudities congested in the habit of the Parts and therefore predatory 3 Diaphoretics which promoting insensible Transpiration must conduce to the dispersion and exhalation of the same Crudities 4 Sudorifics which do the same thing but by a more expedite and conspicuous operation at once rendring the Crudities fluxile and exciting Nature to drive them forth by Sweat For Medicaments of this Family by the tenuity and mobility of their Particles penetrate the inmost Recesses and slenderest Pores of the Body cut attenuate and rarefie Humors into Vapors and irritate the Parts to expel them together with the Serum of the Blood in the form of Sweat But in the use of these Hidrotic Medicaments great circumspection is required lest the matter of the Fever being not yet mature and prepared for this evacuation be both importunely and with too much Violence exagitated to farther corruption of the Blood and increase of the Fermentation So that they cannot be safely administerd to impure Bodies in the beginning nor indeed in the augment until certain Signs of some Concoction have been observed 5 Letting forth of Blood by opening a Vein which evidently detracts part of the Crude Matter