it admits no farther industry therefore the Ages following and ours according to the ingenuity of the best in the time did refine and digest into order those parts of Physick that seemed imperfect They cut off what was superfluous and supplied what was defective and did all with such industry that the Art seemed to have a new face For no part of Physick though obscure and hard can now be concealed For famous men have not ceased to study the Heavens and Stars with their motions and the Nature of the Elements and to search into the bowels of the Earth and to find out by great labour the force of Herbs and all Plants and to know all sorts of living Creatures nay to search into the bowels of Mankind by a kind of cruelty that they might be preserved against the storms of so many malignant Causes This is the reason why we bestow our labour and study for the Common Good in writing this Book and others and in perusing Authors out of which we have gathered this Treatise of Wind that troubles the Body of Man Men are of divers ingenuities and every one follows that which his Nature and heat of Spirit draws him unto Some follow Musick and the Mathematicks others Morality others Religion without any respect to other Sciences Some in obedience to their God Belly follow head-long after lust and spend more time and pains in pleasure and luxury then in honesty and lay up treasure by any means good or bad to maintain their lusts These vain Wretches having nothing but a body which shews their manhood pass away and their memory rots But such whose Souls dwell more nobly in them and think of the adorning of their Divine part lose no time for meditation that they may declare things more clearly to Posterity and be famous to Eternity Of this sort there are many in our Age chiefly Physitians who have so laboured to purge and adorn their Science that no Age hath done more For no Science is so absolute in all things but there is something new that the Ancients did not take notice of or leave unfinished For humane industry is fed by meditation and grows hot by an unwearied force And a generous Soul submits his private studies to the Judgment of the Learned and grows more studious afterwards For if his works are approved by them he is more inflamed to go forward if not he labours to recover his honour and to hit that the second time which he missed at the first Fall how it will an ingenious generous Spirit loseth nothing but gets much This is the cause why we have taken in hand to clear that part of Physick which treats of Wind and is of great consequence to mankind that we may not live in silence as if born for our selves And the rather because there is no disease more usual and vexatious chiefly in the North and less understood by Physitians though indifferently learned then those of Wind. And there is no part of Physick more neglected by Authors for none hath written exactly of Wind but Hippocrates and he hath written so that little benefit is to be gotten thereby We confess the reverend old Man had a wonderful Spirit in shewing the Cause of every Disease But he useth Arguments far fetcht and such as teach rather the Wit of their Author then the knowledge or Cure of the Diseases that come from them And he handles but slightly the breeding of Wind from meat drink of flegm He only speaks of the force of the Air breathed in Nor is it a wonder For his Age was very temperate and no ways given to Luxury Also the Country he lived in chiefly Cous was a temperate Island and did not breed these torments from Wind. But our Age from Gluttony and Drunkenness affords few that are not tormented with Wind. Therefore we shall provide that such as are troubled therewith may be cured and that by bad diet they do not relapse and be again troubled therewith And we shall leave Hippocrates who wrote on this subject more learnedly then profitably and discover for the Common Good those Principles that we know by Experience to be profitable Farewel W. R. A Short TREATISE Concerning Wind in Mans Body CHAP. I. That Wind is a Spirit and of the Division of Spirits I Suppose none doth question but that that substance whether it be air wind or blast which is strong to be heard or felt though not to be seen is called a Spirit For so Hippocrates calls them in his Book of Winds And Galen saith they are spirits Epid. 1. Com. 3. And in his Book of the difficulty of breathing and differences of breathing and in his Prognosticks and that a belch is a kind of spirit and doth after a sort communicate with the spirits of breathing Thus it appears by these sayings of Galen that wind is a spirit now there are differences of spirits therefore I shall shew the nature of all spirits and begin from the chief to the meanest Spirits are either within or without our bodies They without are of three sorts There is the spirit of the living God and of universal Nature and of the Soul The spirit of God shews his hidden Majesty and Power and goes through all things and is every where comprehending all things It hath the minds and souls of all in its power and can carry them where it pleaseth The spirit of Nature is that which all the Philosophers and Poets so commend Plato calls it the soul of the world Galen calls it a mind brought hither from above Aristotle Lib. de mund ad Alex. sets it forth more plainly by this definition saying this spirit is an animate substance that generateth in Plants and living Creatures belonging to all being largely extended it contains all rejoyceth all carrying the vital soul of the world with it and Nature it self and making all things live that it gets into Also there is a spirit under the form of every mortal and concrete thing which knits it to its thick body being of a mean condition between both it joyns things different being like unto both and this spirit is governed and preserved by the other which is the universal spirit of all Nature To these three differences of spirits Arist Lib. de mund adds a fourth saying that wind ariseth from a dry exhalation when it is cast off by cold so that it spreads abroad it self so that wind is only much air stirring about and forced and this is called a spirit also For air is strong though not visible but known by its effects and our apprehensions and Hippocrates in his Book of Wind saith that all that is between Heaven and Earth is full of spirits Also the spirits in the body are comprehended in their several members for they are natural vital or animal All these are called by the name of innate or imbred spirits wind or the flatulent spirit that the great and little world Man might
principal parts and falls swiftly upon sensible places and doth not only disturb them with its quality but pricks them with its thinness and stretcheth tears or wounds them for all biting or sharp causes that are moved whether hot or cold bring horrour and shaking to a living Creature Thirdly this spirit running to and fro troubles the expulsive faculty and the parts which provoked contract themselves speedily to expel the offender and so shake and tremble Therefore this wind in man being like other wind produceth the like effects Now we shall shew what it is CHAP. III. What this Wind in Man is NOne wrote better of this wind then Galen Lib. 3. de Symp. causis who saith it is a vapour raised from a humour or flegmatick meats or drinks or from weak heat But this is an imperfect definition for divers vapours go to the brain from food in the stomach as in Drunkards and in sore Eyes from consent of the stomach which are not called winds nor are they such But that flatuous spirit that is bred in the Hypochondrion from a melancholy humour is truly wind Therefore I would have this wind to be thus described more exactly A Flatus or wind is an abundance of vapours from spirits or meat or drink or flegm or melancholy raised from a weak heat in the body I say an abundance because a small vapour which the best constitution is never free from is not a wind or can puffe up As Galen Lib. 5. in Aph. 72. saith they are windy according to Hippocrates that have much wind in their bellies that is voided upwards or downwards or stretcheth the parts that hold it And Aristotle saith wind is only much air fluctuating or moving and stopped You shall know from Aristotle and what I shall say after why I call it an halitous spirit and not a vapour for none can get any certainty out of Galen in this that calls a spirit vapour wind and blast all one without distinction Therapeut 14. he saith a vaporous spirit is from juyces heated by degrees and that a vapour is an humour extenuated de Sympt caus lib. 1. de Simpl. med fac lib. 1. and Halitus is a mean or medium between the thinnest spirit and blood that is finished Lib. 3. de nat fac All these signifie the same thing therefore I shall not dispute them Nor is that against my definition that Galen saith if a greater heat fall upon a gross glutinous flegm it turns them into a thick or gross wind For though heat be strong yet in comparison of the quantity and quality of the humour it may be weak such as can raise a spirit but not lay it or dissolve it It is so in those that by intemperate drinking oppress the strongest heat We shall now shew in what parts this wind is bred CHAP. IV. Of the place where Wind is bred IN the former Chapter we shewed from Galen and Hippocrates that those were windy bodies that gathered much wind in their bellies which is voided upwards or downwards or that stretcheth the parts that hold it Hence it appears that the stomach and guts are the place of its breeding otherwise it could not go forth upward or downward So wind is bred in the Earth which after rain being warmed as Aristotle saith from above and from it self smoaketh and in this is the force of wind For when the Earth takes greatest force from water there must be most forcible vapours even as green wood burnt affords most smoak The stomach most resembles the Earth in man Galen comparing them saith that Nature made the stomach in stead of an Earth to Animals to be a store-house as the Earth is to Plants For the veins that go to the stomach such Chyle out of it to nourish the whole body as the roots of Trees do from the Earth it is a natural action in both They are alike but the Earth of it self is dry and sapless except watered it produceth no fruit but being moistned as Virgil saith it produceth winds also So our stomach is membranous and dry and except it be moderately moistned with meats and drinks it defrauds the body of its nourishment and it consumes If too much drink be taken there is fluctuation and wind for too much food oppresseth the natural heat and makes it weak but yet it will fall to work or concoct but being not able to do it exactly it raiseth vapours which it cannot discuss Then by degrees the first concoction being hindered there are gross and flegmatick humours both in the stomach and guts chiefly the Colon. If the wind be thick it stretcheth only the stomach and belly but when by degrees it is made thin by heat of the bowels that which was shut up begins to move and enlarge it self and take up more room and stir about to get forth and then all is well But if a costive body by hard excrements or tough flegm in the guts hinder its passage it runs back and roars rumbles and pains the guts and labours by force to get out For when the heat of the guts extenuates the vapours they move readily and of themselves and so are thinner and can pierce farther they run about like Thunder swiftly and open small passages and make solution of unity and cause pain in any solid part by their passage being thin What Seneca Lib. 6. nat quaest c. 8. saith of other wind agrees with this that its force is not to be withstood because a spirit is not to be conquered They only can judge of this wind who have been troubled with it Therefore as the other wind is only bred in the Earth so this is bred only in the stomach and guts as the caverns of the Earth and from thence goes to any part for the body is thin and previous full of passages for the wind to go through which when it is much and gets not forth shakes the body causeth chilness and great Symptoms after to be mentioned CHAP. V. Of the manner how Wind is bred in the Body WInd is bred from heat which is sometimes great sometimes weak and is raised from the matter after the same manner it is discussed For the strong heat of the bowels discusseth it before it get force and hinders it from breeding at the first Absolute cold raiseth no spirits as appears in extream crudities Therefore Hippocrates Lib. 6. saith that in a long Dysentery or Flux if there be sowre belchings it is good because before belching there was no sign of concoction by reason of the decay of natural heat which beginning to revive being but yet weak by reason of the small concoction it raised wind which was belched forth Therefore not great heat nor great cold but a mean between both makes wind according to Galen de sympt caus lib. 6. cap. 2. who saith it breeds in the vacuities of the stomach when flegm there contained or food is turned to vapours by weak heat For as absolute
be alike is joyned to these The natural Spirit is made when the more pure or aerial part of nourishment turns by concoction into thin blood like a vapour This takes force from the imbred spirit in the Liver and goes to the Heart by the hollow vein with the rest of the blood then by heat being more refined it turns to a sort of air and becomes a vital spirit which spread through the whole body by the arteries gives life part of this carried by the arteries of the neck into the net-work of the brain and so into the ventricles increaseth by the air received at the nose and by force of the spirit imbred in the brain becomes animal and being sent to the whole body gives sense and motion The spirit we shall speak of differs much from these and is the fourth spirit in our bodies of the same nature with wind and it is so called It is gross and not so aery or thin as the other You may best know the nature of it if you consider the air in a South or North wind The windy spirit in us is like the South wind and the natural is like the North. Let us leave the innate or imbred spirits which are well described by others and speak of the flatuous or windy spirit CHAP. II. Of the Analogy or Proportion between the flatuous Spirit and Wind or the Wind in Man and in the Earth THere are two things that chiefly blow up our bodies and prepare them for diseases diet and the air Food though at first unlike is at length made like us and turned into the substance of the body Therefore by long use the body will be of the same nature For all Diet though well concocted keeps it in a natural and genuine condition therefore Lettice and other cold things though they be overcome by concoction yet cool the stomach and whole body and produce cold blood So Wine and Garlick produce hot blood Fish Cheese and salt Meats gross blood By which it is clear that not only the spirits and humours by which we are preserved are changed but the constitution of the whole body Therefore a cool diet prepares the body to breed wind by oppressing the native heat Also too much of the best meats and drinks such as burdens Nature cannot be well concocted or turned into good blood but many crudities will be which will cause obstructions and rottenness or corruption by which the natural heat is suffocated as the wiek of a candle by too much grease This crudity and abundance of humours is gathered in all chiefly the Northern Inhabitants these as if it were too low a thing to slay with a sword or hang with a halter or fight publickly kill themselves with kindness they contend in drinking healths and riot night and day and add new surfeits to the former and leave not off till they vomit what they take in or are ready to burst forgetting the saying That gluttony and drunkenness kill more then the sword When too much food is taken it causeth a disease It is no wonder if such have many excrements and wind which for their abundance are not easily voided Also the Country and air is of much force For a hot Country as the Summer inflames the spirits dries the humours and increaseth Choler which causeth most acute diseases But a cold and moist air as it is in the North is like the Winter stupifies the spirits stops the Pores and burdens the body with many superfluous humours and oppresseth the native heat Hence the concoction is weakned and there are crudities and fluctuations of food in the stomach distillations chronick diseases stones worms wind and the like These breed in Man the little world as in the great unto which Aristotle compares him For as in the great world there are four Elements Fire Air Water Earth so there are the same in the little and as in all those Elements are divers substances bred as in the earth stones and trees in the water divers Creatures in the air thunder lightning rain so in man there are bred bones as stones and worms and lice as living Creatures and distillations as rain and wind or a flatus like the wind in the earth To be short the image of the Universe is clear in man For God when in six days he had wonderfully made the world and set all things in order so that nothing seemed to be wanting made man as the abridgment of all the rest to extol his Divine power and wisdom and admire his works Moreover there is nothing in Heaven or Earth the like whereunto may not be found in man if you diligently search and consider the Soul is his God the understanding and will are his angelical Spirits heat cold moisture and driness answer to the outward Elements In the heat appear divers flashes and fiery representations Frenzies Inflammations Erysipelas Feavers In the moisture are distillations and Nodes that come from thence like hail also the humours ebbe and flow in the veins and arteries But the earthy Element of this little world is most like the great in which are stones which our bones do resemble and Ovid calls the stones the bones of our great mother Earth As the Plants Corn and Trees are in the Earth so are the hairs in man As Galen saith hairs grow as Plants For as some grow by the art of the Husbandman others by natural causes only so in animals the head is like a Wheat or Barley-field and the hair in other parts is like other plants in drier ground What shall I say of the Earthquake when many exhalations are bred in the bowels of the Earth by force of the Sun and Stars from a moisture that is sunk into the Earth and from the matter of the Earth when they cannot get forth by reason of the Earths closure or the grossness of the wind there must needs be an Earthquake in part So when flatuous spirits or wind is shut up in the cavity of the body and strives to get out there is great trembling as Langius saith if we may confer great things with small as wind shut up in the bowels of the Earth makes it tremble when it strives to get out so a flatulent air or wind being kept in by the covers of the Muscles and other parts that may be stretched shakes them till it breaks through the Membrane that covers them the vulgar ignorant of this suppose this to be the soul or life-blood While it goes forth without doing hurt at the Pores there is no trembling but if they be stopt it hunts about and gets into cavities and strives to break through so the wind striving to get out shakes the body There is another reason of this trembling The wind shut up in the cavities being beaten back by the heat of the bowels and natural motion grows hot by reason of the want of freedom and so thinner This insinuates it self into any part even the
cold raiseth no vapours because it cannot extenuate nor dissolve nor concoct so vehement heat overcomes for the most part what is comprehended extenuates the food beyond the generation of vapours except it be such as easily turns to wind If the heat be weak it dissolves the food but doth not concoct perfectly and hence comes wind And as in external things as a cold season chiefly when the North wind blows makes the air clearer and a very hot season makes the air pure but the middle constitution of air produceth clouds so it is in Animals heat when very weak or very strong doth not cause wind but the mean between both But Galen 12. Meth. med saith that wind is not only from a mean but vehement heat as appears by their generation there mentioned and by his way of cure For he saith if by any accident a vaporous spirit be joyned with gross glutinous humours that cannot break forth of the body there is very great pain and that from two causes obstruction or heat For obstruction keeps the wind in and gross glutinous matter when it is hot causeth wind And a little after how then saith he shall we cure those pains which a cold humour shut up in the guts hath caused Not by Cataplasms and Fomentations which heat violently for all clammy humours that are gross and cold are discussed into wind by things that heat except they also strongly digest Therefore they must be cut and concocted at the same time by attenuaters which are not too hot From these words of Galen it appears that a vehement heat doth not hinder breeding of wind or discuss them being bred but will cause them from the subject matter to breed anew when they were gone Therefore Lib. 3. cap. 43. he saith we must beware of nothing more in the abundance of such humours then immoderate heat that will melt them and turn them into wind but not digest them The Italian Doctor knew this well who as Paul Aegineta saith cured almost all Colicks with cold remedies and Paul knew it when he wrote that pains from cold clammy and tough humours are to be cured with respect that the medicines be not vehement hot for so they will be melted and turned more to winds Also strong heat doth not only make wind of flegm which it cannot consume but also of any over-much moisture received as in such as have drunk too much Wine or Beer or Broth or stuffed themselves with any gross or clammy food which the heat cannot consume So vehement heat also raiseth wind This is clear in Feavers also in which though preternatural heat abound much drink swells the belly because Nature is thereby restrained Therefore three things are required in the breeding and understanding of Wind heat naturally too weak or so by oppression that the part be sensible and fit and the matter proper to produce wind CHAP. VI. Of the Differences of Wind bred in the Body THe wind is of divers natures one sort is quiet another moved The quiet is gross and of flow motion cloudy and cold that brings seldom any Symptoms but a swollen Belly and Hypochondria without much pain This troubles such commonly that drink thick sweet Ale or Milk or Water between meals chiefly for that corrupts concoction and weakneth the action of the stomach as if you should pour cold water into a boiling Kettle and thence there will be cloudy vapours and fluctuations that will swell the Belly like a Drum which will fall with sobriety and a stool or two But if it stay long between the tunicles of the guts it threatens a dangerous Colick A moved wind because it is thin and running about with great pain is like a changeable Proteus It is either cast out or retained goes forth with or without noise by the mouth or Fundament By the mouth the belch is sour or smoak-like and unsavory by the Fundament it is with or without noise These are of so much concernment in the body of man as the Stoicks according to Cicero Lib. 9. epist epist 22. said that a fart ought to be as free as a belch And Claudius Caesar made an Edict to give leave for any to fart at meat because he knew one endangered by refraining through modesty Suet in vita Claudii cap. 23. But when wind is sent out at neither part but detained it causeth a swelling a Symptom of the stomach not able through weakness to expel the abounding cloudy spirit Also Galen 3. Symp. caus lib. 6. cap. 6. saith there are divers parts of the guts in which the wind moves which though they have not distinct names yet may they so be declared that any ingenious person may understand what kind and how much the excrement is and in what part it chiefly moves For if it sound sharp and shrill it is carried through the strait gut and is more pure and aerial If it puff up it will make a small noise while it goes through the small guts but not so sharp and shrill All these noises are in the spaces of the empty gut usually make the less noise the lower they go Other noises are humming like that of Pipes which cannot give a pure sound by reason of the matter they consist of and the passage being large makes the sound greater Such winds are in the thick guts when they are empty and if any moisture be contained in them it will cause a kind of Bombus which is a rumbling which shews a moist stool to be at hand because it is from Nature moving and it is moist because it rumbled before Also the noise that follows the stool if it rumbles signifies more stools but if it be pure and clear it shews that either the gut is empty or that hard excrements are in its upper part That which is shrill is from the straitness of the passages and little moisture We might here add the different sounds of the wind in the ear but we shall reserve that for the eleventh Chapter where we shall speak of the pains of the ears CHAP. VII How many kinds of Diseases are produced by Wind. GAlen made three chief sorts of Diseases a Similary Instrumental and a Common which is the solution of unity A similary disease is that which overthrows the natural constitution An Organical or Instrumental is that which hinders the fashion in conformation number magnitude or composition The Common is when unity is dissolved in part Let us see which of these wind will produce Hippocrates Lib. de flatibus saith when a body is full of food and much wind prevails and the meat lies long in the stomach and cannot get out for abundance and the lower belly is stopt or bound wind goes over all the body and gets chiefly to the parts full of blood and cools them And if the parts be cooled where the blood comes there is chilness over all the body For when all the blood is cold the whole body must be chill Galen