Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	body_n	motion_n	soul_n	7,616	5	5.6016	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A86183	Deliramenta catarrhi: or, The incongruities, impossibilities, and absurdities couched under the vulgar opinion of defluxions. The author, that great philosopher, by fire, Joh. Bapt. Van Helmont, &c. The translator and paraphrast Dr. Charleton, physician to the late King.	Helmont, Jean Baptiste van, 1577-1644.; Charleton, Walter, 1619-1707.	1650 (1650)	Wing H1398; Thomason E601_6; ESTC R202434	67,180	88

the fore part of the brain and thence discharged upon the fourth ventricle and so carried into the spinal marrow successively it cannot but horridly offend those noble parts and being an alien and acrimonious excrement cause desperate and invincible obstructions and by consequence an Apoplexy or Palsie Secondly the matter of this Defluxion cannot per {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} by transudation through the substance of the brain be first accumulated between the brain and its thinner investment the Pia mater and thence delaps so that both Coats may yet keep their continual distance and separation from the very marrow of the spine in regard the defluxion in its descent cannot but commit a divulsion and solution of unity in the medullary roots of the nerves according to their longitude i. e. as they run out in their distinct disseminations Which wanteth not a multitude of absurdities In like manner should the Catarrh be rained down betwixt the two membranes each of those slender investments provided by nature to envellop the spinal marrow would be double which Anatomical inspection could never yet justifie And should we allow it so to be it would not onely impede the motion of the Muscles but also excite extreme torture and convulsive retractions of the Nerves So there lieth an Error in the Thesis since the Nerve indeed is the organ delative of the mandates of the Will i. e. the mediatory instrument by which the Will transmits her spiritual Mercuries on an errand to the muscles but not Executive of Voluntary motion i. e. not the immediate executioner of the commands given out More plainly thus the Will is Queen Regent the Animal spirits the Nuncij or Embassadors the Nerve the instrument of their transvection or delation from the brain or white-hall of the soul to the member to be imployed and the muscle the executioner of her designes That a Nerve is not the executioner of Voluntary motion may be clearly argued from hence that very few nerves in thicknesse exceeed a thread of double twisted silk Now a Nerve being inserted into the external part of its peculiar muscle cannot probably convey the rheume down to the midle of the muscle without inferring a Palsie of that part from its own obstruction or a convulsion from the aerimony and virulency of the Defluxion Again if they shall affirme that the Catarrh doth trickle down betwixt the Dura mater and the Skull I may appeal for decision to Anatomy which autoptically demonstrateth that the perforations of the spondils of the spine through which the nerves are threaded in their elongations from their original the spinal marrow are so exactly fitted to their magnitude that not a hair can be thrust between without a sensible Compression of the nerve so that by consequence there can be no void space left for the intrusion of a Catarrh into the muscles from the spinal marrow We add that though our Adversaries could find out a place wherein this fictitious rheume may be congregated or passage for its defluxion upon the spinal marrow and diffusion thence through the perforatiens of the spondils into the muscles yet we believe it would amuse their sophistry to give a plausible reason of the succeeding progresse thereof and fully to make out how a humor once delapsed upon a nerve running out betwixt two spondils can remigrate or return back again to invade other nerves successively one after the other What doth the wanton rheume grow weary of one nerve and to satisfie its desire of change at pleasure remove to another T is a Quaere not unworthy a substantial determination how a deluge of salt rheume can stream along a tender and extremly sensible nerve without causing a stuper or dull insensibility in that member into which it is inserted Can it insinuate into the tendinous head and thence creep along into the taile of a muscle Can it retreat thence again to assault other muscles successively as the situation of the second is more prone or declive then of the former and that then the third c or if there may be a new supply of the defluxion constantly succeeding imagined to flow from parts above to fresh ones below how comes it to passe that the superior parts first invaded obtain an immunity from the mischiefe For since the rivulet of rheume doth spring from one fountain the brain and run in one continued Chanel the spinal marrow why should it not rather follow the old tract then wander into a new and undergo the difficulties of forcing and as it were mining out a fresh current Why doth it as if carried on by an adulterous unconstancy desert it s antiently accustomed bed and affect the embraces of a fresh nay frequently a feeble part Why doth it forsake its frequented quarters and range in quest of strang and never yet frequented lodgings Hath it such an Appetite or malitious propensity inherent that goads it on to variety of objects whereon to sate its hostility For conclusion that this Error can expect no sanctuary in the possibility of the rheums defluxions between the skull and the skin and through the firme substance of the Muscles each being invested with a tunicle sufficiently compact and thick may be amply collected from our precedent disquisitions 60. All this being summd up by the impartial Arithmetick of Reason and examined by mature judgement the total Product must amount to this that there can be no way medium connexion or dependence by which a Catarrh may subsist in verity And since no rheume or material principle can be found out to have descended even in any of those diseases for whose sake chiefly the Schools first invented this Chimera of Catarrhs Know all the friends of truth that as often as any peregrine Aer or blast any offensive odor any putrefactive Ferment or exotick Seminality is impressed upon or conceived in the Influent spirit so often is that contaminate and degenerate spirit excommunicated from the participation of Vitality by the severe justice of the incensed Archeus And the Genius or disposition of this depraved Seminality conceived is of no lesse power then this that it can transmit the Influent spirit made an alien to its primitive purity by the assumption of an exotick Ferment rather to parts seated at distance and in the suburbs then such as are neighbours to the Bialto or palace of life As we shall at large declare in our discourses of the Gout * of the duumvirate * and elsewherere For thus Mercury externally applied by Unction subtily runs through all the body and invades the throat tongue and teeth Farther when this vitiated spirit arrives at the place to which it was dispatched instantly it there imbueth the nutriment of that part with its putrefactive Ferment transplanteth and transformeth it into a conformity or analogy to the idea of the Seminality and that nutriment thus inquinated by successive expirations or Afflations and forreigne impressions doth disorder and

pervert the sunctions of the digestive Faculty and by this means doth not onely generate a plentiful harvest of Excrements but also stigmatize or impresse this depravity upon the Implantate spirit of that part so deeply that it can hardly be expunged during the whole after life All which the Schools like mendicants precarious desume from the brain erroneously impute to their four imaginary Humors and the defluxion of Rheums On which Consideration my Theory stands point blanck in defiance to the doting tradition of Catarrhs as positively denying and wholly subverting their material Cause receptaries or places of concretion efficient Cause and manner of Generation and Defluxion and separating the true Causes Effects and method of Sanation far from the ridiculous fictions of a Catarrh 61. By this time we believe it is plain and unquestionable that no salt acid sharp phlegmatick or Cholerick humor can distil from the brain but that whenever the Influent spirit polluted with some alien and putrefactive impression doth arrive at any part of the body then doth nature without delay send thither the Latex or sourse of serous humidity to expung this impression or at least rinse away the Excrements there growing from the depravation of the digestive Faculty For the Spirit once vitiated by any forreigne Contagion wildly rangeth at pleasure through the nerves arteries yea and the very habit of the body whereupon the sick seeming to feel as it were the defluxion or trickling down of a cold rheume the brain is immediately accused as treacherous and the grand author of this ryot and irregularity in nature Now since the Latex is sent to the part newly invaded by this malignant impression not as the primitive Cause of the evill though frequently by accident it doth foment and aggravate the mischief and so make the vitiosity more durable but as a relief or stream to wash away the impression hereupon have the Schools to this day remained doubtful and durst never go so far as positively to determine whether in the Gout the Catarrb is derived from the head by the Nerves or whether transmitted from the Liver onely by the Veins And thus evident it is that the Phlegme and Choler of the Schools flow not from one fountain or Cataract as though the brain were the Common sewer of all these impurities Again as for the last refuge whereunto the Schools flye for protection of their impossible dream of Catarrhs namely the Declivity or downwardnesse of the situation of the members as in relation to the brain and the facility of the passages it may easily appear to be too rotten and fragile to afford them shelter Since as in dead bodies there are none of these respective situations but onely in living so also all motion of humors in the body is immediately caused by the Influent spirit as the onely impetum faciens and mediately derived from the Principle of vitality in whose occonomy the Ascent of humors is of no more difficulty then the descent For in living bodies no humor oweth its motion downward to the declive tendency of its Gravity but in impartial truth to the aim or direction of that missive power which levelled it at this or that determinate part Hitherto concerning the impression of an External depravity upon the Influent spirit it follows that we declare the probability and manner how the same spirit may conceive and as it were batch an internal Character or domestick tincture of corruption It comes to passe not seldome that the Latex contaminated by the admixture of some forreine Salt doth therewith infect the Influent Spirit so that it instantly becomes degenerate from its requisite simplicity and purity though not by reason of any external injury of the aer offensive odor sulphureous Fume c. but from a breath or blast of Contagion conceived in the part affected yea that taking a dislike or abhorrence from the Latex as being polluted and so uncapable of its vital irradiation it grows enraged and forgeth within itself a character of anger and reuenge After this the uncivil Latex like a rude souldier that intrudes himselfe into quarters against the will of the Landlord forceth itself into the society of the offended Influent spirit and though unfit for its conversation as well in regard of its Acidity as immoderate quantity yet it still followeth and hangs upon its skirts In which relation the most hopefull remedies for most of these diseases which cause erratick paines as also for internall Ulcers must be Baths Sudaries and Stoves or Hot-houses for by procuring liberall and profuse sweats and by that means exhausting the Latex as the secondary and fomenting materiall Cause they seem more directly perpendicular to health and conducible to the pacification of Archeus his worship then the more ineffectuall and languid Solutives and Exsiccatives of the Schools Vaine therefore is the story of a Catarrhs arising originally from the stomack into the head and its Condensation Concretion and Congregation in the ventricles of the brain Vaine are the descriptions of its Defluxion between the coats of the spinal marrow or between the skull and skin upon the Muscles And of necessity vain and deplorable must such Remedies be as are administred when the Causes of the Diseases are wholy unknown Vain also are Cauteries and Fontanels for the Revulsion and Exhaustion of Humors that have no real existence in nature And to conclude vain are the Decoctions of China Guajacum Sassafras c. exsiccating Drinks since the evill ariseth at least is occasionally aggravated by the Latex and must be fomented by any immoderate quantity of humidity From whence we have a faire opportunity to collect that sober and parsimonious drinking doth very much conduce to health nay to the cure of Vlcers in the Lungs as also of the Goute Since the Latex which according to the Primitive institution of nature ought to be insipid upon the excessive drinking of eager Wines such are French Rhenish and Sherry doth acquire a manifest Acidity or sowernesse and instantly communicate the same to the blood from whence proceed Corrosions sharpe Spasmes and Convulsions errattick paines and chiefly the Gout But of the history and necessity of this Latex we have written a particular Discourse 62. You may please to remember that the primitive Material of all concreted substances is onely Water * and all fruits or productions of mixt bodies arise from the same principle Let us therefore grant that the Latex being naturally insipid doth upon the accesse and fermentation of any seminality or fructifying tincture instantly grow Acide By example in the beginning of the Spring if you make an incision in the rind of a Vine or Birch tree neer the root there will distill forth a very great quantity of thin insipid liquor which is nothing but the water freshly attracted out of the earth but if the incision be made higher in the stock or branches then will the liquor be a little Acid. The reason is

the same in the Latex which being naturally insipid doth if contaminated by the contagion of any ferment admixed acquire a sensible Acidity and inherit any forreine quality or tincture devolved from the vitiosity of our aliment This Latex the Schools have wholy neglected and indeed because they confounded it with the Vrine T is a blind and rude method of exploring the secrets of nature to make no distinction betwixt the Generatum or production and the Materia ex qua or materiall cause thereof no difference betwixt the Mother and the Daughter as if the Muccus ordinarily dropping from the brain by the nostrils the salivous humidity of the jawes and tongue the Water effused betwixt the omentum muscles of the belly and the skin in the dropsie and the Vrine were all one and the same matter namely the liquor we ordinarily drink The Liver therefore being misaffected and invaded by any hostile impression if it sound a retreat to the Latex and call back the streams thereof to its own assistance doth not convert it into Vrine but makes it the material cause of oedematous * Tumors or an Anasarca a 63. I am not a person subject to such extravagancies and wild singularities as to affirme that the Pleurisie Tooth-ache and other such maladies whose tortures were insufferable were they not in some sort moderated by their acutenesse or brevity of duration are no real Entities For I too well know and lament their tyranny over us I admit them as Diseases but oppose the vulgar tradition of the causes maner means waies end or destinations of Catarrhs Those fictitious and inconsistent causes I deny and explore other more reall and probable in whose remove the direct way to the restauration of heath doth consist I acknowledge that any man upon the rupture of an Aposteme in the Lungs may die suddenly yet I positively deny that a Catarrh is the cause of this Aposteme or that death is ushered in by a Defluxion And with much more earnestnesse I deny that an Aposteme in the Lungs can be generated from vapours exhaled from the stomack and recondensed in the brain For which reason I account not a Consumption the daughter of a Defluxion of rheume upon the Lungs but the genuine issue of their own Archeus seduced into irregularity and a depraved execution of the power delegated to his administration I conced that the Gout may be praesaged a day or two before the invasion of its paroxysme from the sensation of the motion of the salt matter which runs to the joynts like a drop of scalding liquor but cannot allow a Catarrh to be the cause thereof since I know assuredly that its material principles manner of generation waies of distillation and places of concretion and collection are prodigious figments irreconcilable to truth But the Latex ordained by nature to wash away the impurities from all parts official to concoction like the river Alpheus brought by Hercules to cleanse the stable of Augeas is of itself innocent and insipid but in its course meeting with the pollutions of saline tinctures resulting from impure and inconvenient aliment it soon degenerates into hurtfull and acrimonious and breeds Apostemes Vlcers and pruriginous maladies as the Itch Scabbs c. I cannot fool my own credulity so far as to apprehend any probability in the common opinion that vapours can ascend out of the stomack into the plane of the brain be there condensed into water where is a constant actual heat and thence penetrate through the substance and double investment of the brain Nor can I shake hands with that impertinent heresie of Paracelsus that the aer drawn in by inspiration is carried down directly to the stomack and other viscera of the lower belly but allow that a very small quantity thereof is insensibly strained through the capillary perforations of the midrife For in long compression of the breath neither any considerable intumescence of the Abdomen can be observed nor doth the breath upon its efflation smell of any thing conteined in the parts below the Midrife In like manner can no vapours of Wine or other inebriative liquor arise up to the head unlesse by the Arteries * For whatever procureth vertigoes or giddinesse in the head swoonings and other intoxicating Accidents belongs to another Common-wealth then that Eutopia of vapours Nor from the Wembe can vapours be transmitted into the head however vulgar Pathologie affirmes that wild and durable perturbations of the Animall Faculties and a strong cons●pition of reason are derivatory from malignant and narcotiall exhalations arising out of the wombe For those surious motions and actions of the matrix are not to be ascribed to any sympathy dependent on the necessity of Perspirability but to the mon●machy or civil war of that peculiar Monarchy of the wombe wherein women seem to be strangled by an ascention of some certain globular body or lump up to their throat This action is a commotion or tumult of the offended spirits residing in that part or an error in the government of the Archeus or uterine President enraged to whose arbitary power all parts of the body must doe hon age and conform as I have amply explained in my Treatise called Ignota actio Regiminis For the dominion of which the Womb hath over all parts of the body is no lesse absolute or diffusive then that whereby the Testicles distinguish a Cocke from a Capon a Bull from an Ox and a man from an Eunuch as wil in the Figure of the body as the blood flesh skin and animosity 64. But in regard all those disease conceived to proceed from Catarrhs the contaminated Latex hath obtained a peculiar superintendency or domination over the other humors of the body and responds to the nature of Water therefore doe all Accidents accompanying such infirmities observe their periodicall exacerbations most toward night the influence of the Moone queen regent of all humane substances operating those vicissitudes or causing ebullitions in us at those houres And these Accidents display their hostility most upon the brain weakned by any native or acquired distemper praeceding as also upon the Nerves and Membranes as parts whose small stock of Vitall heat makes them lesse able to resist or subdue the impressions of externall Cold And hence is it that Consumptive Hydropick Gouty and decaying bodies carry an infallible Almanack in their bones presage change of weather and by the Augurie of their pains are sorewarned of ensuing tempests which I have for that reason Christned Tortura Noctis the torture of night It is my serious V●inam and may be many others that this way of prognostication had not cost us so deare as the sufferance of such intolerable anguish and anxiety For almost every week observes unto us that men once inured to weare the fetters of the Gout or tainted with any imperfection of the lungs yea such as are onely troubled with cornes on their feet are suddainly awakened out of

their Profoundest sleep by the twinges and cruell mementoes of their infirmities against change of weather and by this smart advertisement can at midnight tell that Juno hath put on her sable weed of Clouds and that the unconstant winds are tackt about to another point of the Compasse 65. Paracelsus was pleased to opinion that Mercury was Lord Paramont or President over the Alimentary liquor through the whole body and for that reason in another place de morbis miner alibus both in name and reality he confounds this Planet with the terrestrial Moon 66 But we on more substantial and precise grounds stand assured that each nutritive humor of the body doth conform to the regiment and obey the alterative influence of that seminall part unto which it is proximly to be assimilated nor doe the liquid substances in the body hold any correspondence with the Stars so long as they are not radically inoculated into the stock of Vitality i.e. untill by the irradiation of the internal Sol or vital Spirit they are rarified and exalted into a finenesse requisite to their participation of lif● Which is a convincing argument that the Marrow in the bones is an homogeneous part of the body but no alimentary or liquid substance since it is evidently subordinate to the Moon and the brain to whose influential power the bones are subject And thus all diseases conceived to tyrannize over man under the mistaken name of Defluxions as also the Veneral Contagion or French Pox Contractions of the sinews torments of the joynts c. fall under this one generall title or denomination Tortura Noctis in this interest that their Paroxysmes or periodicall invasions depend upon the motions or ebullitions of the Latex are regulated by the influence of our Moon and observe their tides or vicissitudes in exact conformity to the various motions positions and configurations or reciprocal Aspects of the Planets FINIS * Ineffabilia verba 2. Cor. 12. c. ver. 4. * Qui venustatem verborum non sensuum acumen insectatur Casp Hofmannus in praefatione sua ad lib. de Generat Homin Metaphysicorum lib. 3. cap. 1. de Coelo lib. 1. cap. 10. * Writers on the Diseases and Symptoms incident to the body of man * Metaphysic lib. 2. cap. 3. Cur solitae opiniones placeant insolitae etsi firmioribus rationibus bus innixae displiceant 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10 11. * Errhinum est medicamentum quod naribus inditum ex cerebro sine sternutatione humores praesertim pituitam evacuat * Apophlegmatismi sunt remedia quae in ore aliquandiu detenta ejusque cavum leniter ferientia per emissaria palati capiosam pituitam è cerebro deducunt quaesensimpostea frequenti sputatione facilè excluditur 12. 13. * Princ pia Hypostatic a sunt quae majori v● ac efficacia prae reliquis pollent unde in Schola HermeticaCheironia virilia virtuosa dicuntur suntque Sulphur Mercurius Sal. Sal est principium hypostaticum cum vi fermentandi coagulandi Ejus signatura est ut intrinsecus sit fusil● metallorum instar fixus ex trinsecus autem combustibilis et incinerabilis Sulphur principium est hypostaticum cum vi maturandi tingendi homogenea attrahendi heterogenea repellendi tendendi a centro ad circumferentiam vicissim Hujus signatura est ut intra sit fixum oleaginosum sive pingue extra inflammabile esse fugitivum Flamma quippe est Sulphur volatile Mercurius est principium hypostaticum cum vi vegetativa et instaurativa Hujus signatura interna est sovere ignem potentem externa vero est liquidum glutinosum incombustibile frigidum esse Joh. Raicus tract. de podagra 14. * Vocabulum hic ab authore usurpatum est Latria {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} autem exprimit nedum cultum divinum quo sensu legitur apud Job Evangel. cap. 16. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} ast etiam servitutem suxta illud Sophoc in Ajace {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} illud proverbium Phocylid {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} tempori servire 15. * {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} cibi appetentia proprie dicitur quo sen●u et Juvenal usurpavit pro vehementi edendi aviditate rabidam facturus orexim * Calculi enim quandoque in Liene reperiuntur materiâ hac tartareâ longa die in e●dem coacervatâ ratione interni nativi coagulationis principij in lapideam induratâ duritiem Hi autem ante mortens vix deprehenduntur et medicinam spernunt * remitte ocu'os ad pag. 68. în tract. de magnetica vulner curat ibi fusè explicatum invenies quid apud medicos designatur per Catochen 16. 17. 18. * Proprio didactro inquit Helmontius {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} enim sonat idem quod minerval latine five praemium doctrinae 19. * Gas bifurcatum ab Helmontio nostro fabricatum inveni primum scilicet Aquae sive Meteoron secundum sylvestre Ga. Meteoron designat Aquam in vaporem per geniale aeris frigus ubi omnia eo semel deducta consumuntur in pristinum aquae elementum retrocedunt resolutam Quinam vapor alterius utique sortis est quàm vapor per Calorem suscitatus eo itaque respectu paradoxi licentia in nominis magè convenientis egestate halitum illum Gas nominavit Author non longe â Chao veterum secretum Gas autem sylvestre est spiritus quidam naturae hominis planè hostilis atque á prunoribus nondum cognitus qui nee vasi● cogi nec in corpus visibile reduci nisi extincto prius semine potest Corpora enim continent hunc spiritum quandoque tota in ejusmodi forum halitum abscedunt non quidem quod actu insit ipsis siquidem detineri non posset imò totum concretum avolaret sed est spiritus concretus more corporis coagulatus excitaturque acquisito Fermento ut in vino fermentante omphacio pane hydromellite itemque ruber ille ex Chrysulca operante eructatus vel additamento peregrino ut ex auro adjecto sale Armeniaco vel tandem per aliquam Dispositionem Alterativam qualis est Assatio respectu pomi Hujus autem ignoti hospitis tum ortus tum hostilitatis atque implacabilli ferociae quae nobis insidiatur capitaliter exegesi ulterius paulò inhaerendum eâ potissimum relatione ut nedum Quidditas atque Nativitas hujus Gas innotescant ijs quibus contigerit nondum omnia Helmontij mysteria perlustrare sed etiam ut istud epitheton sylvestre non incongruenter illi appensum commonstretur Primò itaque quoad essentiam ejus quidditativam meditare turpiter admodum esse delusos qui credidêre Gas uvarum est vini spiritum in musto Gas enim uvarum musti ex fermento ebullitionis concept● excitatum