ferments of the bowels which being enslaved by snatched ferments do often and successively measure their Original To wit of a mummial ferment is made the salt of the venal blood which is to rectifie or govern our family-administration but if in the kidney it be made diuretical it is now made an Urinary salt I perceived therefore that those things are onely and truly provokers sf urine which have a faculty of increasing the urinary salt and which do make it an easie client unto themselves In the next place I perceived that not onely in the dispositive ferments of the organs but besides by reason of Magnum Oportet or the necessary remainder of the middle life in Simples themselves that there are their properties of propagating and changing salts For some things have more gross salts and those unfit for receiving the ferment of the stomack and therefore they remain unconquered Others in the next place there are which by a hostile property are contrary to the vital powers and so they enter not but for troublesome ends into the Inns of Life I perceived that the volatile salt of the spirit of Vitriol did from a ready obedience in the first action of dissolution pass into a meer Alume For if the body of Mercury shall coagulate into a white powder although it reserve nothing of the matter or vertues of Mercury for that declareth the former weight of Mercury yet it passeth into a meer Alume But if the sharpness of Vitriol shall finde in the stomack a muscilage meeting with it it melts the same neither yet therefore doth it become Aluminous So that I perceived one and the same salt to be diversly transchanged by the thing connexed with it I perceived therefore that there were some salts which would cleanse away the filths in the stomack before they were subdued by its ferment but others which did slowly open their saltnesses and that not but after another digestion and seeing they did now manifest that thing that they were diuretical and diaphoretical or sudoriferous salts so also that then they would successfully free the veins of their obstructers I moreover perceived that there are salts which do not finde their disposition but at the time of dunging and they are sharp and colical or those which are opposite to these and are connexed in oily essences But the chiefest and most successfull of salts is that which reacheth unto the utmost bound and subtility in Nature which passeth thorow all things and in acting doth alone remain immutable and the which doth at pleasure through a ready obedience resolve other things and melts and makes volatile all rebellious matter even as hot water doth snow I by and by perceived specifical savours to wit of Mace Saffron c. to be as properties or as the shop of the ultimate forms uttered by salts excelling in strength Not indeed that these savours were the proper vertue of that form but rather the fermental putrifaction of that seed proceeding unto that ultimate form For truly a savour as such is a solitary quality unprofitable for healing a witness of the putrifying of its ferment by continuance a co-operator of curing as it disposeth the Archeus as a messenger that it may descend into the knowledge of a hidden property For unless things shall smile on the Archeus by savour and odour they are not admitted within Yea purging Medicines being in their first look without savour as are Turbith Hermodactiles Jallop Mercury Stibium c. as being masked with much Sugar yet if they are taken again they cause horrour and abomination There is therefore one taste of the tongue and another in the stomack as it were the utmost part of the Archeus Therefore stomatical savours which are acceptable do denote that there is in the thing a bountiful life a-kin to ours Wherefore a Cat is more delighted with the smell of putrified and stinking fish than of Cinnamon So indeed we do oft-times well perceive that poysons are occult or hidden by reason of their specifical savour and odour horrid to our Midriffs In like manner as oft as a pleasing taste appears in a poyson I have perceived that under the same Simple there lurketh a great secret the which the poyson being repelled is born and ordained for difficult effects I afterwards perceived that besides specifical savours and the gratefulness benevolence or horrors of these there was a certain formal property issuing forth yet unperceivable by the tongue and to be comprehended by the Archeus alone The Schools are amazed when they come unto occult qualities as they do therefore call them For when they cannot ascribe their trifles to heats colds and the begged complexions of these Writers indeed do lay aside their pen and Physitians do lift up their shoulder and eye-browes because they accuse that property to be known to them in the effect but unknown in the cause and they excuse themselves of this ignorance because the searching into those properties is impossible for mans understanding the which they else had already long since enquired into As if they should say We Schools are able to determine of as much as the mind of man can search We therefore decree that no powers of things can be understood or searched into by man but those which are the first qualities of the Elements or to arise from these We confess therefore that the formal faculties are occult because unpossible to be known Certainly the Schools are exceeding clayie or earthy watery airy cloudy and fiery how ignorant do they shew themselves of their own objects and how unlike to the exercise or practice which they profess For they have enslaved their wits to sluggishness that nothing may be more acceptable unto them than to have inclined to excuse their excuses in the ignorance and impossibility of nature wherewith every one vails his own in particular For at first when the Antients saw any Disease to be cured by a specifical and appropriated Remedy they were amazed as it were at the miracle of an unwonted thing But afterwards the Schools thought it satisfaction enough to have banished their blockishnesses into a general ignorance For neither although they had distinguished causes from the elementary qualities unto them known had they therefore spoken any thing undefiled and without suffusion of the sight For whoever hath more searched out the cause of moistness in the water or of heat in the fire by a reason from a former cause than of drawing Iron in the Load-stone The elementary qualities therefore are as hidden as any other Truly in this were the Schools blinded because they have proceeded against the Doctrine of the Gospel For primitive Truth willeth that we know the Tree by its Fruits but the Schools will that the Fruit ought to be known by the Tree I will therefore shew by the Fruits in what manner we must come unto the knowledge of the Tree First of all therefore for the knowing of occult causes a certain
poysons of Minerals are bred of Salts Sulphurs and Mercuries whereby their fury is propagated by a Seed Analogical or agreeable in proportion But how evident is that thing in the company of Vegetables where those seminal perturbations and therefore also co-natural ones are by Seeds transplanted with a continued course For we may well know any kind of poysons which are reduced by the ranks of perturbations by distinguishing of them Consequently also the knowledge of specifical properties is drawn per quia or from the Effect of the Cause if they are reduced unto the certain orders of perturbations or disturbances and affections Even as more largely elsewhere concerning the Plague So indeed many things are searched into and found out we thereby by the Effects come to the Causes and being led by the hand from one knowledge to another the poysons of an Erisipelas and Dysentery being in their Tearms from the wroth of the Archeus their cure is in a Hare wherein is fear meekesse flight and an harmless life Neither is the argument of contrariety of value For first of all I have admitted of contrarieties in living Creatures and I say that the properties of those being as it were sealed in the Idea's of living Creatures are in some sort contrary in the priority of the efficient tree as the Seals of Passions do end in to this Idea And so the fruits of this tree do act no more by way of contrary Passions but from the force of a received and inbred seminal Character wherein every thing acteth according to the Talent received even as it is in it self but not by reason of a repugnant duality or disagreeing contrariety Therefore the blood wherein is the seminal product and the effecter of the fearful meekness doth mortifie the poyson which is bred from a poysonous wrothfulness For I have noted in things loves hatreds terrors and the seminal products seals Idea's and characters of these Whence I have found out the immediate Causes of many hidden Remedies But I have interpreted them to be found out and suggested by me with the truth of possible and appearing consequences These things I have spoken concerning occult or hidden properties out of the Dream that we may cease to be occult Philosophers and may follow the manifest Doctrine of the more tractable ones Now I will prosecute my Dream I perceived I say that Smallage Asparagus and whatsoever things are taken to open Obstructions have indeed a Salt of a specifical savour the which being with their middle life made the Cream of the Stomack remaineth surviving although enfeebled yet that they do obtain weak Remedies for the opening of Obstructions For truly those things which do keep the Savour of their own concrete Body under the ferment of the Stomack as Onion Garlick Mace Turpentine Asparagus c. Those I perceived even to slide along with the Superfluities because they wax soure with their specifical Savour and then do take under the Gawl the nature of a Salt and at length under the dungy ferment of the Reines do put on a Urine-provoking or diuretical faculty But whose specifical Savours do putrifie by continuance and perish with the sourness of the Cream those things I perceived to be indifferent meats but whose Savours do not plainly yeild themselves into the sourness of the Cream and do after some sort remain in their mediocrity for the Cream if it should alike on every side receive a ferment and wax soure it should easily be sharper than Vinegar those things indeed-do through the force of the Gawl easily perish in the Meseraick Veines that together with a third or mumial ferment they may be changed into Venal Blood Therefore I perceived those to reach forth feeble aides for dissolving or opening of Obstructions At length I perceived that all simple Salts of the Sea Sal gemmae Fountaines Salt Peter c. as such do depart through the Urine and Intestines and in the mean time resolve the filths or dregs in those passages and render the expulsive faculty mindful of its duty But I perceive that Salts which carry a Mineral fruit in them are Strangers to our Nature and therefore are scarce to be inwardly admitted But Salts which are a part of the composed Body as Lixivium's and Alkalies I perceived to be deprived of Seminal Virtues and to have onely an abstersive or cleansing Soapie or resolving property unless they are volatile wherein I perceived the radical Beginnings and seminal Balsams of the concrete Body to be I perceived I say that these are easily transchanged into a new fruit because they do associate themselves with and act in all things according to their inbred endowments In the next place I have perceived the corrosive spirits of Minerals to differ far from themselves being crude to resolve the Excrements adhering to the sides of the first Vessels Yet not to be altogether destitute of Dammages by reason of an occult infection of Arsenick admixed with them from their original Therefore I perceived that occult properties as they call them being seminally traduced into the Archeus by the generater or efficient do unfold the presence of their Object and a sympathetical knowledge as they are immediately entertained in the bosom of the Formes Some to wit by a motive local Blas as the Load-stone Amber Gummes Lacca the herb Turne-sole Diamond for this also even as Carabe or Amber doth attract chaffes c. do bewray themselves but other things are terminated into an alteration as poysons likewise laxatives medicines tied about the Head or Body Antidotes c. Laxatives I have peculiarly perceived to operate onely by reason of a poyson lurking within them which being once admitted inwardly nigh the entrance whatsoever they touch they do ferment do afterwards resolve the things fermented and for that very cause do putrifie the things resolved I perceived therefore that Laxatives do putrifie the vital juyces but seldom the excrements the occasional causes of Diseases For seeing they are Poysons in respect of us and not of excrements hence they rise up rather against us than against Diseases And most speedily indeed do putrifie the more crude juyce or the not yet vital blood of the Veines or the yesterdays Cream But because they scarce suppress the excrements neither do these in like manner obey them seeing every action or Blas in us doth proceed from the Spirit which maketh the assault whereof excrements are deprived hence no Physitian dareth by taking Laxatives to promise a cure But true Solutives do neither cause Putrifaction nor selectively draw forth feigned Humours neither therefore do they resolve our vitial parts or things and the which Solutives I have perceived to bewray themselves by a three fold Sign First That they draw nothing from a healthy Body neither do they move after or weaken that Body Secondly That they do not fetch any thing forth but what is offensive and therefore they do not aggravate but ease of the burden and presently
temperature of the seeds of their composed Bodies But the spirit of mans urine is neither sharp nor Alcalized but meerly salt even as also that of Horses is And that for this cause because the Volatile sharp matter of the Chyle of the stomach is by vertue of another ferment transchanged into a Volatile salt Even as elsewhere concerning the digestions of Animals I here give thee to observe by the way that in things transchanged there is not an immediate regresse or return unto that from whence they were transchanged no more than from a privation to a habit For that in transchanging the last life of the thing perisheth because the whole disposition of the middle life of the former Being is at once taken away by reason of the extinguishment of its former seed For therefore things transchanged do keep the essence of a new Being with a neglect of their former composed Body Therefore have I found any Remedy whatsoever unprofitable which I otherwise had believed to be very likely a dissolver of the Stone from its former composed Body Yet that is a truth that the spirit of Urine in the fundamental point of its nativity is salt and that by reason of that salt it doth more readily coagulate other Spirits than any sour or sharp spirit doth Milk Neverthelesse the spirit of urine doth not coagulate milk or the venal Blood Because the spirit of the venal blood yea and our vital Spirit is salt after the manner of Urines From hence indeed the spirit of the urine hath it self after the manner of an excrementitious spirit cut off from the blood and so by reason of a co-resemblance it is its Chamber-fellow neither do they act on each other And then also I observed that the spirit of Urine doth not more strongly coagulate those things which were already before coagulated For Bole Clay or the rocky or Chalk-stone do by degrees degenerate by the spirit of urine into a nitrous Salt and are rather dissolved Since therefore the spirit of Urine doth not coagulate Bodies already coagulated such as are Bole Clay c. As neither Bodies coagulable such as are Milk and the venal blood but it coagulates the spirit of Wine or the like thing which is entertained with it in the urine for as was shewn above after the fermenting of urine that urine containes also a spirit of Wine or Aqua vitae I desisted not seriously to enquire after what manner the stone is coagulated in us and in our urine 1. First of all it is an undoubted truth that Duelech is not of a calcinous or limy condition however Paracelsus may be carried on the contrary 1. Because a calcining degree of heat is wanting in us 2. And then because every Alcali is rather that which is destructive to a rocky stone than a Coagulater thereof 3. Because a Calx or Lime presupposeth a Chalky-stone and therefore Duelech should be calcined before it were a stone 4. From the composing parts of Duelech it shall by and by be made manifest that it is not possible for Lime to be in it yea nor that Duelech himself is calcined or doth send forth a Lixivium or Lye Likewise neither is Duelech of the nature of a gowty Chalk because he growes together in the midst of the urine but that Chalk is coagulated from the Sunovia But the Sunovie is a living seedy muscilage which degenerated in the journey of nourishment and from a transparent and Crystaline matter hath passed over into a thick white and slimy matter as of Gouty persons elsewhere from a matter without savour I say it is transplanted into a sharp one though the tartnesse whereof indeed it hath attained a thickness or grossness For then also it is unfit for a total diflation or transpirative dispersing of it self To wit whereby the nourishable Liquor is wholly consumed without any remainder But the Sunovie being once infected with a tartness its watery parts are pufft away but the gross remainder waxeth dry by degrees into the utmost dryth and hardnesse of a Sand-stone But Duelech attaines to the utmost hardness of it self in one onely instant of time The Gouty Chalk therefore differs from Duelech in its whole matter and efficient cause For therefore such a Chalk is hardned out of the water because indeed by drying Neither for that cause doth it imitate the hardness of a rocky stone but onely of a sandy stone I have spoken these things to that end that it may be manifested that Duelech differs from any other coaguted Bodies whatsoever in its different kind of Agent and matter And seeing notwithstanding I as yet knew not the manner or process of the birth of Duelech but I knew in the mean time that Bodies do nor receive the limitation of their hardning but by the actions appointments and properties of their own seeds Lastly Since I knew that whatsoever things do act corporally are altogether sluggish slow and idle as for the coagulation of Duelech therefore I enquired into fermental savours and Odours as the Authors of many seeds Therefore I found the savours and actions of Salts to be indeed famous ones but not any thing reaching the vertue of the salt of Urine And then also I beheld the more weak or feeble Salts which might follow the Race of Sulphurs But Mercury although it alone according to Paracelsus did contain the whole perfection of the thing yet I found it to be slow and feeble For as oft as I distinguished Salts and Sulphurs from their Mercuries I admired at their sluggishnesse and indeed at the dignities of these two Principles Wherefore I stuck in Salts for the searching out of the nativity of Duelech I confess indeed that Mercury being a flowing mettal in its nature and properties is never sufficiently known But that body hath deceived Paracelsus through a similitude of proportion he thinking because his Device had pleased him because he had endowed the watery matter of things with the name of Mercury that therefore the properties of Quick-silver and its natures without a peere being never to be sufficiently searcht into did agree as suitable to all Liquors which may be drawn out of Simples For all the Philosophers of former Ages confess that nothing in the Universe is not so much as by far to be likened to Argent Vive Yet it hath not been hitherto sufficiently unfolded that Argent-Vive or Quick-silver is a Simple actually existing body but not a constitutive part of things And so that there hath been nothing but a meer abusive passing over of a Name For this cause I as yet perswaded my self that seeing a non-Duelech was made of Duelech that ought to be done by the action of an Agent on a disposed matter And although I knew these and many the like things yet I discerned that I therefore knew nothing the more Wherefore I as yet more detested a wording or discursive Philosophy because it was that which stayed me before the Threshold of Nature
its drying something that is not fixed doth of necessity puff out Moreover let the Retorts be senced with a crust or parger which may neither cleave asunder nor contract chaps or fall down of its own accord or be too much glassified Let also the neck of the Retort which hangs out be most exactly connexed unto the large receiving vessel that not so much as the least thing may expire But let the Receiver be placed in moist sand likewise let the boughty part thereof be covered in a Sack being filled half full with moist sand Which Sack let it be divers times renewed being tinged in the coldest water But let half of the Retort be filled with poudered Vitriol But distill it by degrees and at length let it be urged with coal as much as is possible for the furnace of wind which is blown by its own iron grate But when the furnace of wind shall cease to dismiss the spirit into the receiving vessel let the porch be opened on the side by which way the Reverbery of the flame of the wood may pierce under the Retort and let it so continue for five or six nights with the highest fire possible to nature The Retort perhaps in so great a storm of the fire will seem to thee to melt but nevertheless it will endure constant throughout because the outward coat of male or fence of earth with-holds and sucks the glass and so it is englassened as much as shall be sufficient for the work At length remember thou to sequester the receiving vessel from the neck of the Retort the fire being as yet most ardent otherwise thou shalt see in a more cold station the spirits to return into the Lee or Dreg which spewed them our Then lastly take the Colcotar or Lee remaining of the distillation which thou hast reserved from true Cyprus Hungarian or at leastwise Goslarian Vitriol Let that residing dreg being co-mixed with Sulphur be again burnt unto the every way confuming of the Sulphur But afterwards thou shalt bedew and moisten this feces with the aforesaid spirit For that spirit as it is presently imbibed in the glassen dish or gourd so being fetcht again from thence it returns nothing but a watery and unprofitable phlegm the spirit having remained imbibed in the Colcotar And repeatingly renew thou that operation six or seven times until at length the spirit that is poured thereon wax red which will swim upon the Colcotar which is a sign that we must cease from the plenteousness of imbibing And so let this rich Colcotar being well dryed be put into a Retort and let this rich Colcotar be distilled even unto its utmost spirits now waxing yellow and casting the smelling odour of grateful honey Yet remember thou to draw away the receiving vessel from the Retort being as yet of a bright burning heat and that this spirit must be kept by the mouth of a more strong bottle being close stopped with wax Whereinto lastly if thou shalt cast water the vessel it self presently breaks asunder Therefore by the only spirit of the former distillation this second spirit is bridled or restrained whereof scarce one pound is poured over from bottle into bottle but there is made a loss of one ounce at least And likewise unless the Receiver be seasonably taken away from the Retort as I have said thou shalt see the Furnance being cooled that most potent spirit to have returned into Colcotas from whence it was struck out by fire Moreover the Lee of Colcotar which is left of the second distillation is as yet wholly Coppery and waxeth green after many fashions From whence 1. That is manifest which I taught before Namely that the fire of Venus is not to be drawn out and had but by an every way destruction and separation of the mettal 2. That this therefore must be done by a far more hidden way 3. That the Vitriol which is rich in Copper is less fit for distillation than otherwise the common Vitriol is 4. That the Vitriol of Copper poures forth the spirit of the Vinegar of a mineral salt but not the volatile Liquor of Copper 5. And therefore that the sulphur of Copper is rightly called the sulphur of the Philosophers being fit for long life Being sweet I say in tast but not tart or sharp 6. That the spirit of Vitriol which is above perfectly taught cures some Chronical Diseases 7. And that therefore the spirits of Vitriol hitherto sold and in use are nothing but a mineral Vinegar being also adulterated in it self 8. That the residing Colcotar is most rich in a Medicinal Virtue 9. That the preparation of Vitriol prescribed by Isaac Holland and other Moderns hath not sent the Arrows unto the true mark 10. That our spirit above described and thus rectified as it is volatile and salt proceedes even into the fourth Digestion and reolves diseasie Excrements that are met withall in its journey And by consequence also takes away the occasional cause of many Chronical or lingring Diseases I have therefore already delivered the like Form or manner of distilling the spirit of Sea-salt of Salt-peter and the like Yet thou shalt remember that Vitriol hath in it self the earth of Colcotar wherefore the other salts do desire dryed Potters earth and that being exactly admixed with them But besides I have already delivered the manner of preserving from the Disease of the Stone by Aroph and likewise by Ale boyled with the seed of Daucus or the yellow wild Carrot I might therefore desist and repose my Quill and leave the matter to others more successefull than my self by wishing that every one may henceforward add what things he shall find out to be farre better For since Duelech besiegeth onely mankind and is produced from Excrements themselves after an irregular manner but doth not arise after the manner accustomed to other infirmities Therefore it seems to be singularly bred for a revenge of sin even before other Diseases and to be permitted by God in Children being as yet Innocent for the averting of a greater evil For although some Bruits do generate small stones in themselves yet those stones are not bred in them from the Causes of Duelech nor appointed for a punishment or tribulations unto them but rather produced for the profit of man But if therefore Duelech doth relate to the fault of sin but since sin hath drawn its rise from a Wood or Tree it hath seemed also to me that preservation of health in the disease of the stone is not onely to be expected from the seed of Daucus and some such like Herb but from some certain Wood Wherefore it is indeed true that a Wood against the stone of the Kidneys hath been of late brought unto us out of the Indies but I have not ever therefore perswaded my self that divine Goodnesse had so long denyed unto the Europeans that it might succour even the poor man that had the stone untill that through many expences a Remedy
fixednesse of a bone as also in the fractures of bones For the Chyle of the stomack is the same after growth as it was in a Youth But all that is at length discussed without any remainder of it self it again retakes the nature of a bone in a callous concretion in the solidness of fractures And therefore for that very cause all Chyle is volatile and thus far it sometimes doth assume the disposition of spirit in the venal bloud Not indeed because there is a natural spirit in it and diverse from the venal bloud but rather because the whole venal bloud hath obtained a spiritual Character in the promise John 5. The water the bloud and the spirit are one But I will teach concerning digestions after what sort that sowreness in the Chyle may be transchanged into a volatile Salt whose excrementitious part is banished with Urine and Sweats But the very Masse of venal bloud through the fermental virtue of the heart and assistance of the Pulses doth passe over into Arterial bloud of yellow looking reddish whence it is made vital spirit And so is not the air or vapour of the venal bloud but the venal bloud it self is brought into arterial bloud and from thence at length into vital spirit For the Office of the Liver is univocal and is called Sanguification but not the creation of spirit which do differ far from each other For neither do so many and so diverse Offices belong to one bowel especially because the rude heap of venal bloud is not yet a fit seminary for the spirits For it is sufficient for the Liver being enriched with so few Arteries and a communion of life that it performeth a true transmutation of the Chyle into venal bloud and a true generation of a new Being But in the heart as it were the fountain of life it is first of all meditated concerning vital Beginnings For the Venal bloud is there extenuated into Arterial bloud and vital air which two are wholly perfected by one only action according to the more ready and slow obedience of the venal bloud For the venal bloud is made with the in-thickning of the Chyle or Cream therefore by the separation of the liquid excrement or urine But the spirit is made with the attenuating or making thin of that which is in-thickned Both which actions so opposite do not therefore agree with one Liver But if the Schools will have a natural spirit to have fore-existed in meats but to have received a perfection in the Liver But yet it easily expires in things boyled cocted and roasted And if any doth by chance remain that spirit is not the hepatical or Liverie one of our Family Goverment I confesse indeed that the Spirit of wine is the spirit of Vegetables and is easily snatched into the Arteries as it were a simple Resembler previously disposed that it may easily passe over into vital spirit But from thence the Schools do frame nothing for their spirit of the Liver For the Spirit of wine is immediately snatched into the Arteries out of the stomack without digestion Neither is it taken as a vital companion by the degree of venal bloud it is also easily from thence gathered that the vital spirit doth not presuppose a natural one And what I have said is manifest For truly they which suffer fainting or trembling of the heart do presently and immediately feel the spirit of wine to be admitted into the fellowship of life for neither then also are they made drunk by much wine abundantly drunken Otherwise Wine being as yet corporally existing within the stomack drunkenness doth not from elsewhere proceed than because the winie spirit is abundantly snatched into the heart and head and there breeds a confusion of the fore-existing spirits it self being a stranger not yet polished in the shop of the heart Therefore the venal blood it selfe let it be the spirit of the Liver corporal coagulated into a matter and subjected to a vital Goverment with me it may be so so that we understand it Rhetorically to wit the venal bloud it self to be an object capable and a matter that it may thereby be made Spirit And in speaking Phylosophically or properly there is no spirit in the venal bloud made for it self by the Liver because the labour of Sanguification seperation of the Liquor Latex Urine and Sweat doth employ the Liver to wit while those do most swiftly pass thorow the slender Flood-gates of small veins For the venal bloud although it received an entrance of it self in the Meseraick veins yet the true generation of the same is made also the endowments of small threds and coagulation under the most swift passage together with its Whey through the small Trunks of a hairy slendernesse But if also the generation of spirit doth moreover employ the Liver Truly besides the vain generation of the same the Liver is to prostrate it self like an Asse with too much fardle and plurality of offices And it is sufficient for the venal bloud that being made a Citizen of the veins it doth partake of life and be illustrated with a vital light Therefore even as by the ferment and labour of the heart the venal bloud is made arterial bloud and volatile spirit So a ferment the Vicar of the heart being drawn from the arteries they are also made so volatile that after their consumings they leave no remaining lees that do go forth with a totall transpiration of themselves Therefore the heart doth frame out of the venal bloud arterial bloud which it fitteth and extenuateth by the same endeavour and makes so much vital Spirit in the arterial bloud as the groseness of the venal bloud and the resisting substance of the same doth permit in so little a space wherein it is agitated and shaken together within the bosoms of the heart yea indeed neither is it enough to have known the venal bloud to be Spirit also to be brought over into arterial bloud and to grant a vital Spirit by whose favour it may be informed by the minde and be made animate and from hence at length to be translated into the bosoms or stomachs of the Brain there to receive the various limitation of Characters So that it is made motive in the thorny marrow or Spina Medullae as we have seen in the Shops optical or of the sight which if they are through some errour brought to the tongue they are plainly unprofitable for tasting Wherefore it comes to passe that oft-times the fingers are benummed some moveable part looseth its sense being left either feeling or motion for that the parts are bedewed with a strange and wandring Spirit For the Authours of touchings are unfit for motion and those of this likewise for them But moreover it behoveth to have known the disposition of the vital Spirit For truly it will sometime sufficiently appear that of soure Chyle partly venal bloud and partly salt Urine and the excrements are made But that that excrementitious
the sick doth thereby feel himself well Lastly In the Third place That they do not draw out the Disease by Sweat Vomit or Stool but do unsensibly resolve in whatsoever part the Disease is entertained Nature being busied about the rest I have perceived also That such Laxatives do not electively bring forth Humours which are in themselves feigned but seeing we are nourished by none but one onely juyce the blood therefore also we intend the driving forth not of the blood but of Diseasie excrements do resolve whatsoever forreign thing is implanted within the Inne of Life but not vital things unless they are taken in an undiscreet dose or frequency Otherwise they onely have respect to excrements Nature affording her aid within to this end And chiefly seeing they are from God as well by Creation as the endowment of knowledge they have received the ends of their Ordination onely for a good purpose Therefore I perceived that Paracelsus had erred who teacheth That Laxatives do not otherwise operate but as the Laxative Medicine by calcination and a supervening moisture should be resolved together with the Humours like Calx vive For first of all he that proclaimed War against the Humorists now again acknowledgeth Humours Then also his assertion is wholly ridicvlous Yet the lesse if either Laxatives should be taken being first calcined or might have been calcined within or the ejections should ascend onely unto a treble of the things taken For what of calcination have the leaves of Sena in them Doth not Asarum by boyling cease from making Laxative And thus far is ignorant of a Calx I have furthermore perceived That Chymistry doth give more powerful and absolute operations and that there are those things prepared by the same which before were not For neither was the Oyle of Tiles or Bricks formerly in the Oyle of Olives as neither the spirit of Salt in Salt or of Vitriol in Vitriol c. For by the fire they assume an Acrimony as Honey Sugar Manna Dew Earth c. Other things do thereupon lay aside their corrosion as the juyce of Citron Scarrewort Frogwort Water-Pepper c. They erre therefore who do equally judge of the Spirits by the concrete Body For truly although Spices and sweet smelling things do persist in distilling yet the seminal virtues of the concrete Body do for the most part perish through the fire and are made another thing For some things their volatile parts being separated do become an Alcali or fixed Salt a Calx Ashes and Glass which things were not before in the composed Body For I perceived that there was nothing in the concrete Body which did not issue from its seed For the Fire seeing it is the death of things if it doth not totally destroy the seeds of things yet at leastwise it notably transchangeth them Therefore in one thing a preparation doth transchange the whole matter as in Magisteries but elsewhere by reason of a sequestration of some things it onely changeth sharpeneth destroyeth or consumeth the things which are left Thirdly In the next place by things adjoyned now and then the things themselves together with their adjuncts are diversly transchanged by the Fire and become neutral as Glass which is no more Ashes and Sand. Often times also without the fire adjuncts do pierce the root of the mixture and that especially a ferment coming between and then a neutral concrete Body is constituted For so of Rie-bread and Honey Ants are bred of Honey and Dew Eeles of Basil and the hoary putrifaction of a Stone Scorpions of a Calf being strangled and Dew Bees But those things which are mixed by fusion onely do oft-times suffer themselves to be reduced into their former Being For so although Glass be no longer Sand yet from thence by Art yea and through the oldness of putrifaction by continuance the same Sand is found because it is as yet alwayes materially in it not thorowly changed because without a ferment I perceived therefore that many volatile things being joyned to volatile things by reason of a mutual action with each other are transchanged into a certain third thing In the next place that volatile things are fixed by fixt things and in this respect do pass over into a new Being after another manner fixed things being joyned with fixed things do remain in their antient Being I perceived also that Mineral Remedies being changed into the nature of Salt I do not understand those which are seasoned by an adjoyned Salt do carry with them their seeds yet exalted into a degree These things Paracelsus hath sufficiently taught concerning Hematine or sanguine glassie Mettals wherein although the whole Mettal be resolved into a strange disposition which is that of a Magistery yet because the running Mercury is straitway drawn out from thence whatsoever hath truly assumed the nature of a resolvable Salt is not the Mercury or inward and immutable kernel of the Mettal but onely the Sulphur thereof Wherefore those Hematines or Magisteries do perfect admirable operations in the Remedial part of Medicine I perceived therefore that the Hematines of Sol and Lune or of Gold and Silver although from the purity of their Balsame they might comfort yet that they did contain some strange thing in them in respect of us I perceived I say That the crudity of Saturn or Lead was solvable through the fatnesse of fixed Salts to be sometimes destroyed piece meal by the Fire alone and so that the parts of the composed Body were divided and the crude Argent-vive permitted to run the fugitive Sulphur overcoming in the Saturn doth draw unto a volatilized fixed one unseparably joyned And the which the sublimation of the Saturn doth chiefly dispatch In the expression whereof there is no difference of colour or substance between that which is elevated with that which resideth Whence also the causes of Heat Fusion and Softness deeply or inwardly residing after the calcinements and reducements doth not refute the Fusion and wonted Softness without the Fire There is the same cause of the sweetness of Saturn For the most sharp calcined things if as in Lead they are tempered by a concourse of Vitriolated things they are dulcified or sweetned with the properties of Sal Armoniack resolved and of Tartar being putrified The Symbols or resembling Marks of all which things in all their examinations especially in distilling separating of Lead into Salt fugitive sulphurous coloured fat parts with the sharpness of Roch-Alume are discerned by a quick-sighted and industrious Chymist not without great delight I perceived I say That there are Planetary virtues in Mettals if they are reduced into the nature of a Salt or Sulphur yet that ought to be done without the remainder of every adjunct wherein not every Boaster could go to Corinth For after that I knew how to unloose bodies by things agreeable to their radical Principles then at first I began with a comfortable weariness to deride my blockish credulities whereby I in times
condensing 7. In the lime of rocky stones there are two divers salts for neither could it otherwise ever become a stone 8. The errour of Galen concerning Ashes 9. The Author when he had learned nothing from coagulated Bodies at length examined divers spirits 10. The errour of Paracelsus concerning Tartar 11. An examination of salts 12. The highest vertue of Vegetables 13. From whence a salt ariseth in urine 14. Duelech doth not stonifie after the manner of lime 15. What the Sunovia is 16. An examination of fermental savours 17. Paracelsus is taken notice of concerning Mercuries 18. An abuse in forbidding the use of salt 19. The handicraft Operation of the salt of urine 20. The vanity of Turnheisser his signifyng by the urine 21. Two the more fixed salts in urine 22. The differences of both those salts 23. The difference of the Volatile from the fixed salt of the urine 24. The ferment of the stomach is not any kind of sharpnesse whatsoever 25. Burnt vrine yielded not an Alcali to the Author 26 The Vulnerary drink of a certain Country man 27. That an Alcali doth not fore-exist but is made in burning 28. A digression Unto some ranks of Simples 29. The calcining of Harts-horn is a thing of notable blockishnesse 30. Sea-salt whether it hurt those that labour with the stone 31. That salt is not to be forbidden for its owne sake as neither for its spirit-sake 32. The fittest salt for eating 33. A wonderfull handicraft Operation in the distillation of urine 34. The judiciary part in Vrines why hitherto false 35. What the stone being distilled may teach 36. Earth together with the spirit of Vrine never makes Duelech 37. The constituting principles of Duelech 38. How sands are made in the Vrinal or Chamberpot 39. The Confirmation of the stone is fabulous 40. A stone of a wonderful bignesse 41. Paracelsus is ridiculous in the stone of a Thunderbolt 42. Duelech is made of meer volatile things 43. Three spirits concurre in the Vrine for the nativity of Duelech 44. Volatile Bodies are oft-times through their concourse presently fixed together at once WEE read in our Furnaces that there is not a more certain kind of Science in Nature for the knowing of things by their radical and constitutive causes than while it is known what and how much is contained in any thing So indeed that the knowledge and connexion of causes are not more clearly manifest than when thou shalt so disclose things themselves that they bewray themselves in thy presence and do as it were talk with thee For truly real Beings standing onely in their owne Original and succeeding principles of seeds and so in a true substantial entity do afford the Knowledge and produce the cause of knowing the nature of Bodies their middle parts and extremities or utmost parts Because they are the cause of the Generation existence and thorow changing of them according to their Root Because as Raymund testifies However a Logitian may have a profound wit discourseable or natural concerning things without Yet he shall never by any reason which comes unto sense be able directly to know nor judge with what kind of nature or vertue through a fortitude or strength within the multiplication of grain possesseth it self so as to grow or increase upon the earth unless by reason of a similitudinary example drawn from observation Neither shall he ever know after what manner a seed buds growes and collects fruits in the earth unless he shall with an experimental Doctrine first enter into our natural Philosophy and not that Sophistical discursive one which is bred in Logitians by divers phantastical presumptions who with the Prognostications of Sequels contrary to the power of Nature make many stubbornly to erre in the sophistication of their mind Because by our handicraft knowledge the understanding is rectified by the force of experience in respect of the sight and of a true mental Knowledge Yea our experiences stand over the head of the phantestical or imaginative proofs of Conclusions and therefore neither do they endure them But they shew that all other Sciences do livelily enter into the understanding From whence we afterwards understand that thing within what it is and of what sort it is Because by such knowledge the Intellect stands uncloathed of superfluities and errours which do ordinarily remove it from the Truth by reason of presumptions and prejudiced or fore-judged things believed in the conclusions For from hence it is that our Philosophers or followers have directed themselves to enter through any kind of Science into all experience by Art according to the course of Nature in its Univocal or single Principles For Alchymie alone is the Glass of true understanding and shews how to touch and see the truths of those things in the clear Light Neither doth it bring Logical arguments because they are too remote and far off from the clear Light And therefore the Smaragdine Table hath it By this kind of demonstration all obscurity will free from thee and all the strong fortitude of strength which vanquisheth subtile things and pierceth all solid things will be attained by thee Wherefore I am called Hermes Trimegistus as having the three that is all the parts of Philosophy and the perfection of the whole world Thus he Between praying therefore and knocking a mean in naturals namely of seeking by the fire is supposed I indeed hoped by searching into the Contents of urine visibly to know it no otherwise surely than by a true solving or resolution of urine Therefore first of all I distilled my own urine being first kept in a wooden Vessel untill that at length it voluntarily conceived a ferment and boyled up no otherwise than as Wines do so that my ear could perceive the boyling About the end whereof there was a little burning water distilled from thence But of the remainder I collected a most white salt of a sharp and uriny stinking odour But I know not whether there be any thing more subtile in the whole nature of things It being a noble Remedy against the Jaundise and other Diseases I endeavoured by this Salt to dissolve Duelech in a Glass But the event answered not my attempt Again my own urine was putrified anew in Horse-dung That the unlike part thereof might incline to a separation of its last life Then I distilled it by cohobating it four times according to the prescription of Paracellus and I found frequent Crystals therein being yellow and of a sharp top The which although they might be of conducement against the old obstructions of Excrements yet of none against the affect of the Stone Thirdly I mixed the spirit of my Urine with Aqua vitae dephlegmed or refined and in a moment both of them were coagulated together into a white lump or gobbet yet wondrous swift or volatile and subtile My Eye in the first place there taught me That the spirit of Urine was an unparallel'd and great Runnet because it was
of the Animal or Vegetable in their rocky nature are for the most part the more civil ones and so being as it were houshold Citizens they are the more easily admitted into our Common-wealth for their countenance do cause a hope of their Signate that as oft as they depart from their stony disposition they also obtain a power of executing the natural endowments promised in their Signate they enter into Wedlock with us and communicate their intimately espoused promised vertues unto us The which cannot happen but by a full resolving of them into their first Being For I have made the stones of fruits to wit of Medlars Dates Peaches c. Volatile without any Caput mortuum or dead head after that they had returned into a milkie juyce And that indeed without a separative distillation For I have found that this kind of remedy doth restore no otherwise than as Aroph doth preserve Of which two I make this difference that restauration is the cutting off of the received inclination but preservation is a prevention of that which is to come through a hinderance of the disposeable matter But in a true cure both are included Furthermore for the true resolution and melting of Duelech being generated the Ludus of Paracelsus obtaineth the Chiefdom not that it is a flint and that children do play with it even as some have interpreted the Etymologie thereof But because Ludus is alwayes extracted in the form of the ancle of a die or square cube of the preparation whereof this is the description according to the Author Ludus being exactly beaten or pounded calcined and boyled even into the form of an oyl the which he by almost one only word calleth the Gawl of the earth and a corrected Altholizoi which soundeth al. tho oli gesotten or that which is wholly converted into an oyl by boyling Which most eminent preparation of Ludus hath hitherto been made known but to a few Mortals under that brief Tract of words And although the world be worthy of Compassion and that its preparation may in a more manifest sense be described yet the manifold Contemners of secret things are unworthy that those things should be manifested now which God for most weighty reasons would have to remain among a few and the little ones of this world in the possession of the treasures of his own dispensation until that nothing be hidden which shall not be revealed in its own fulness of dayes in which fulness of time Wo to the world and to its confusion Yet will I speak a little plainer that those only who are skilful in the Phylosophy of the art of the fire may comprehend me Let Ludus be beaten into a powder in a Morter and under a Pestil And then again under a Whetstone in a stonie or marble morter Then afterwards let it be calcined not indeed with a roasting fire but let there be added unto it the Circulated salt whereof Paracelsus speaks in his book of renewing and restoring and the salt being distilled from thence is called Ludns Calcined Because with the small labour of two houres it will be wholly converted into a slat Let Ludus therefore being thus calcined and reduced into a salt and being of equal weight with it self run down of its own free accord into a moist place But let that salt being resolved be shut up with Hermes Seal in an Egg with a long neck and let it continually boyl in Sand with a fire of the second degree untill that all the Ludus shall in its own equal weight stand like a more gross Oyl upon the water which it drew from the ayr of the Cellar For then all the Ludus is a volatile salt in the form of an oylie salt dissolved and it hath a certain kind of tast of urine and therefore it goeth through the urine with the drink in its entire vertues and dissolves every stone wheresoever it shall lurk in the Body because it is a volatile salt it is resolved in moysture neither is separated in the shops of Digestions But because it doth after some sort represent the tast of urine and in the mean time hath properties that are friendly to our nature it is willingly received and is also dismissed to the Kidneys The dose thereof is of 14 grains unto 20. with a small quantity of simple distilled-water And the stone of an indifferent or reasonable bignesse in the Bladder is resolved into the bignesse of a Pine-kernel especially in two weeks The liquor of Ludus being thus prepared is called by Paracelsus the Gaul of the Earth because if it be extended in paper it is of a dark Citron-colour not a little declining to green For it is a stone exceeding wonderfull it onely answering to the descriptions of Paracelsus to wit being bred of the salt of the urine of the Liquors of the Earth In the bottom of the earth according to the depth of the bladder in the Body of man But I have found it at the bank of the River Scalds nigh Antwerp where Bricks are boyled and it is scituated more or lesse than 40 soot under the Horizon according to the depth of the River For I compare the bottom of the River unto the bottom of the Bladder But it is not in the bottom of the River but it is extended in one onely and simple roof or story under the ground or bottom of the brim in a neighbouring field nigh to the sides of the Banks and that for some miles And that Vault or story of Ludus doth scarce exceed the thicknesse of a foot Neither also is it any further extended above or beneath the aforesaid Vault nor is it elsewhere round about to be found There is also in the aforesaid Field a frequent Fire-stone being rich in sulphur and vitriol The which although it be very hard under the earth yet it soon becomes brickle under the ayr to wit through its vitriol decaying by degrees But Ludas is a palish stone now and then covered with a clear crust throughout its seams being as to a great part of it volatile in the Potters Furnace For this stone is the top of Stone-breaks and the desire of those that have the stone Happy is he who can calcine the same as I have now admonished But the labour thereof requires not onely reading and thinking but a full knowledge being also doubly confirmed Because it is the labour of Wisdome the hope of Adeptists Therefore he is most Rare whom God in this Age that is full of misery hath throughly brought unto this Scope It is not sufficient to have known the Ludus or Cevilla of Paracelsus and the native birth thereof and that it ought to be reduced into an oylie volatile Salt without the loss or destruction of its natural Endowments But since there is not a more laboursome part in all Chymistry which Paracelsus doth often declare in the preparation of the Tincture of Sulphur which graduates or heightens the
of all things as well in generation as in the transmutations of meats throughout the course of life which office doth properly respect the inbred or implanted spirit But now how and whence the spirit floating in the Arteries may be constituted by occasion of the Blas of man already described consequently I have undertaken to explain in this path their Office and Properties The Schools teach That nourishments are first changed into Chyle and then into digested juice and venal bloud and so that a certain naturall spirit is made in the Liver which afterward by a repeated digestion of the heart is changed into vital and at length is in the Brain made animal or sensitive so as that the natural spirit is ordained for nourishing of the parts but the vital for the preserving of the same and the animal for the functions of sense motion and the soul But I think it hath been far otherwise Phylosophized and farther proceeded For they had known out of Hippocrates That a certain spirit is that thing which causeth violence or maketh the assaults But it was not sufficient to know that there is a certain Spirit to have told by what instruments it should be made or what it might act unlesse they should explain also the disposition substance and properties of the same together with the manner of its making I have elsewhere delivered That of any plant and fruit a ferment being applyed Aqua vitae or a water of life may be made which thing seeing it is commonly known while out of Grains Hydromel or Water and Honey and juices it frameth a water of life The Proposition needs no demonstration But Aqua vitae is a volatile Liquor Oylie as it is wholly enflamed and wholly Salt as being sharp biting as being detained the longer in the mouth it burns the upper skin of the gums and lips and is one and the same simple thing and so it containeth two only and not the three Chymical Beginnings So indeed That according to the will of the Artificer the whole Aqua vitae may be made Salt or Oyl that is That those Beginnings are not Beginnings not constant things but changeable at the will of man But the Wine as to its Winie part contains a spirit answering to Aqua vitae For this is searched through the Arteries of the stomack unto the head without the maturities of other shops So that if more wine be in the stomack than is meet drunkennesse follows as the spirit of the wine doth flow more largely into the head than that by a fit space or interval it can be changed by an individuating humane limitation For from hence the changing and likewise the operation of the ferment is manifest Notwithstanding in Wine that spirit is milder than Aqua vitae which is drawn forth by distillation which thing appears from the like in Oyl of Olives For the Oyl which they call Oyl of Tiles or Bricks or Olem Phylosophorum being distilled doth far differ from the Oylinesse which is drawn out of simple Oyl by digestion only with the circulated Salt of Paracelsus for that circulated Salt is seperated the same in vertue and weight after it hath divided the oyl of Olives into its diversities of parts For a sweet and twofold Oyl is seperated out of oyl of Olives even as a most sweet spirit out of wine being far severed from the tartnesse of Aqua vitae Whence I have learned by consequence That whatsoever is distilled only by fire doth far recede from the vertues of the composed body But in us although meat doth putrifie after its own manner to wit if that putrefaction be a mean of transchanging a thing into a thing yet in our digestions by that putrefaction I speak of the action of the ferment of the stomack Aqua vitae is not extracted out of Potherbs Graines Apples or Pulses For truly the intention of nature is not then to procreate an Aqua vitae and there is one ferment in us whereby things are resolved into Chyle and another whereby things do send forth an Aqua vitae or a water of Life out of themselves For while herbs do putrifie in water through a ferment the stalk stumps or stocks and leaves do remain whole in their antient figure and hardness for the extraction of Aqua vitae which being eaten by us are turned into Chyle and loose their first face Wherefore I have comprehended as many varieties of putrefactions and as many dungs of one bread different in the particular kind as there are particular kinds of living creatures nourished by bread Yea further far more ferments of bread because bread doth putrifie as yet by more means as well of its own accord as from an appointment But what is spoken of bread as much is said of other meats The Schools indeed knew That nothing doth profit us which should not contain a Beginning or Essay of life in its root and so therefore they do admit of the air for the increase of spirit being deceiued by the Lessons of Poets who call them Vitall airs to wit they would have in the venal bloud a spirit of the Liver naturally actually to be and to glister like air For they thought it to be a vapour being ignorant that a vapour is never made an uncoagulable Gas an air sky or wild exhalation but that it alwayes remains water Therefore they thought a vapour exhaling from the venal bloud hunted outwards even as out of a certain luke-warm Liquor should be that spirit of the venal bloud whence vital spirit should be materially framed But surely the venal bloud as long as it flowes in the vessels of the Mesenterie and Port vein is void of spirit Wherefore it being also called out by laaxtive Medicines it is voided forth stinking without any notable token of weaknesse which comes not so to passe if it hath once well touched at the hollow vein Because then the venal bloud is Homogeneally or after one and the same kind sealed in its entrance that it may be made the bloud of the Artery and spirit and therefore it is in the Holy Scriptures indifferently with the Arterial blood called a Red spirit in which the Soul inhabits Although that be properly understood of the Arterial bloud Because the Scripture is there speaking of men stabbed or slain whose venal bloud is poured out together with their arterial bloud I shall at sometime teach concerning digestions that whatsoever is made or composed in the stomack that doth wax soure there by a ferment also Sugar it self not indeed with a sournesse or sharpness of Vinegar Oyl of unripe Olives Citron or Vitriol but by its own like ferment and with a specifical sowrenesse although it symbolizeth or coagreeth with other sowre things in that which is sowre Yet the sharpnesse is diverse from them all by an internall power And that sowreness of meats is perfectly volatile Neither doth that hinder that the Chyle in Youths doth assume the
principiating material cause from a formal effect So I have sufficiently and over-proved that neither of them is true For it hath hitherto been unknown that all Bodies are materially of water onely Indeed Paracelsus had seen Mettals and Wood to stonifie and to be immediately reduced into a Salt yet he knew not that the hardness of things as also their solidity compactedness and weight is not from the nature of his thorowly taught principles because they are those things which are demonstrated to be non-beings in the nature of principiating as neither from a material virtue elementarily but onely from the appointment of the Seeds Therefore I collect two things one is that Paracelsus is unconstant to himself touching the Coagulum or curd of Bodies and concerning Tartars But the other is that the Maxim of Aristotle falls to the ground That for which every thing is such that thing it self is more such For although hardness do proceed from the Seed and its appointments the Seeds ought not therefore to be harder than the things constituted For the Archeus which disposeth the bones to their hardness is not therefore harder than the bones yea neither are the means directed to the end more hard solid or compacted than the things constituted For Aristotle being readily inclined unto Maxims brought over his experiences from artificial things into nature therefore hath he every where slid in nature because he being wholly ignorant of nature doth miserably quarrel CHAP. XXXIII Tartar is not in drink 1. Some suppositions proved before 2. That Tartarers are not in things constituted 3. Three Monarchies of things whence a threefold stone 4. It far differs from the Tartar of Wine 5. The Stone in man is made from errour but not from the intention of Nature 6. An Argument from the like is not of value 7. Some Arguments taking away Tartar out of drink 8. An opposite Argument 9. The rashness or heedlesness of the Schools 10. Two Histories 11. The boastings of Paracelsus 12. The swellings in the neck or Kings-Evill are not from Tartar 13. Wine is innocent of humane Tartar 14. Whether stony or Rockie waters do contain Tartar 15. Whence there are Strumaes or swellings in mans neck and not in that of Bruits 16. A Remedy against those swellings 17. A Remedy against Scirrus's and swelling pimples in the face 18. A preoccupation or prevention 19. A distinction by a Maxim VVHatsoever Arguments do take away Tartar out of Meats are like premises in this place But seeing waters do immediately wax stony the proposition is to be confirmed by a stronger Engine In the first place I have taught that every Stone is immediately the Son of water but not of Tartar And then that the concretion or growing together of every Body is from the Seed but not from the Law of Tartar Thirdly that the concretion appointed by the Seed is from the integrity of nature and so from the gift of Creation but not from Tartar which according to Paracelsus is nothing but the excrement of a thing But a natural product is of its Mother matter but not of a step-mother and moreover of a seminal or efficient beginning in which all the figures Idea's and knowledges of things to be done are At length the Types or figures of Tartars are not in things by Creation framed for our destruction as neither a Medicine of destruction in the Earth what therefore doth it make to the introducing of the nature of Tartat into Diseases that a stone is the fruit of water if the condition of Tartar be not in a stone Or that Tartar is the fruit of Wine if there be no such thing in other things For what doth it prejudice nature if the phantasie deluding a Stone external or the Stone internal with a name shall call it Tartar And he weakly enough and without proof affirmeth that Stones and every solid Body do mutually agree with Tartar of Wine in every property For truly that his own assertion is free without truth and probability For the Stone in us is generated by another seed mean and progress than Tartar out of Wine or a Stone out of water are To wit there are three Monarchies of Bodies in the Universe the Animal Vegetable and Mineral therefore there is a threefold Stone and that distinct in the whole Monarchy For a Mineral Stone differs from the Case of the Kernel of Medlers Peachies c. and both these again from the Stone of Crabs Bezoar Snall-shels Fish-stones the Stone of Man c. Again those three Stones do also far differ from the Tartar of Wine which is not to be reckoned among Stones seeing it is the concreted Liquor of a Salt For a Mineral is either a Rockie Stone which may be turned into Lime or a small Stone which is not calcined as Gems Marbles Flints But both are now concluded in one onely name of Petra or a Rock But a Vegetable Stone seeing it is burnable as the Jeat or Agath otherwise also Mineral Sulphurous Stones it is rather a knotty Wood than a Rockie Stone But an Animal Stone is rather a stony bone because it is partly burnt than a Rockie Stone Also for distinction of the stone of man from other stones that is by Paracelsus called Duelech Because rockie stones as well the mineral as vegetable ones are fruits natural necessary and of the first intention in creating But Duelech is onely a Disease and like to a monster But in other enliâ—ened Creatures the stone hath obtained a profitable appointment Whence it is made manifest that although waters do beget a Rockie stone yet that they do not therefore follow the essence seed and manner of generation out of the Tartar of Wine For Duelech after sin doth from a diseasie excrement but not from the intention of nature nor from a Rockie or tartarous matter but by accident to wit through the errour of the faculty breed a diseasie seed through the necessity of a connexed agent wherefore I do not admit of Tartar rather in drink than in meat but if it be potentially in Wine that comes to passe by the necessity of a connexed agent and by accident neither can it have place of exercising forces or actuating in us to wit that by a power a potential Tartar may be actuated in us and therefore I do not admit of a tartarous generation in drink appointed by God for our destruction for what if bones are found in the flesh and the seeds of a Mineral Rock are stablished in the waters shall therefore the seed and immediate matter of bones be in Fountains or the seed of a Mineral Rock and its immediate matter be in the flesh or venal bloud If not in the venal bloud then neither therefore in drink and meat For death is not the handy-work of God And God saw that whatsoever things he had made they were good as well in his own intention of goodness as in the essence of the Creature Therefore there is
A most notable decree or opinion about the Direction Power Progress c. of Remedies 21. The healing of a remote wound and the notable force of Alcalies restraining remote sharpnesses from the stomach 22. The Schools are deceived about the Remedies of wounds 23. A lixivial Salt doth potentially lay hid in Herbs and performeth other things which the Alcali of things calcined do not so easily do 24. Whence the diversity in the Remedy of a wound and Vlcer is 25. The diuretical or Vrine-provoking virtue in a vulnerary potential Alcali is examined THE mouth of the stomach doth very often not endure the hand laid on it although on both sides supported by the Ribs for a sure token that it doth there undergo a most acute and precise sense or feeling which otherwise did seem to be required rather in the tops of the fingers for the distinguishing of things to be felt But that it cannot suffer the hand laying upon it by howsoever acceptable a Luke-warmth obvious nor burthening it with its weight that very thing bewrayeth that the life the fountain of all sensibleness is there which notwithstanding as it doth primarily accuse it self to be thus affected So also it makes it plain that it is the sensitive soul principally obvious to hurtful things being involved in the immortal minde But loe I look back to the Schools who being uncompelled do confess the tenderness or the too much acute exact and precise feeling of the Orifice of the stomach to cause almost all swooning of the minde And these things they so say neither in the mean time do they reflect themselves on their own Maxims stablished concerning the heart neither do they consider that that sharp sense thus named by them doth argue nothing else besides a vital aptness but not that more or more open or manifest sinews have happened to one part more than to another In the mean time they have not once considered that the life or soul is entertained in that seat they being unwilling to have the soul beheld in a Sack or Membrane and they had rather believe it to be laid up in the bellowes of the eares of the heart or in the idle or slow Brain For although they delivered their hands bound while they marked or perceived that there are virtues in the Membrane of the womb troubling or stirring up commotions in the whole Body yet the priviledge hath not been as yet granted to the Schools of beholding and confessing that that thing is likewise granted to the stomach Indeed by the complaints of many that do wanâ—onize with foolish leacheâ—â— they were compelled because they did bewail that they were oppressed with an eveniâ—â—â—owling and vexed about the mouth of the Stomach But the Schools have nâ—â— therefore recalled the traditions of the heathens into a doubt nor at least being pâ—icked by the way have they doubted to hold it confirmed whether happily there might be in the same place the light or entrance of a vital Beginning which being primarily affected by â—rovoking causes might first feel its own discommodities For neither is the command decreed but by the Court as neither is the power of life delegated or appoynted but by the life the President that is the Soul For it is from thence first manifested that unlesse a granted Character be imprinted on the Seed by the sensitive Soul that very seed is to remain barren and monstrous no otherwise than as the flower of a Pompion whereto a small Pompion is not seen joyned or grown behind Therefore if the Soul doth sit as in an Inn whence seeds do originally borrow the Character of their own fruitfulness it is also not to be doubted that the powers as well those vital as propagative do lay hid in the same place And moreover because that seat of the sensitive soul doth not only govern the digestive faculty of the Stomach and doth stir up an unnamed souâ—ness of the ferment of the Stomach unto this purpose and suffers it to be clean taken away from it self according to the vigour of the laws of nature and to be cut short of its bound But the very life of the Stomach is chief over all the digestions of the whole body however dispersed into hidden or also remote dâ—ns Indeed that is proper to the soul by a singular radiation or in-beaming and as it were participating of its own life as though by an only and naked beck and command of the Duâ—mvirate it did constrain obedience from on every side and that it were due unto it from every one whence it likewise follows that the same vital vigour is every way dilated and by an erroneous guidance that the exorbitances of the same are also diseasedly transplanted even to the fingers ends So indeed that hostile sourness the which although it be acceptable to the Stomach yea and very meetly requisiâ—e yet now in strange soyls it becomes an enemy For neither is the proof of that hostility to be borrowed from far for truly in the dog-dayes it is plain enough to be seen that fleshes presently after they have entred the threshold of their begun corruption they afford sour broths and those tinged with an unwonted colour Therefore a forreign guest of the Stomach being brought by a vital Beginning unto a strange field some strange defect doth for that very cause presently follow which doth for the most part also presently bewray its presence Indeed it is a disease which if it be brought into the Veins through the errour of the Duâ—mvirate badly enraged or enflamed it brings forth Fevers But if the hostile sourness or sharpness be brought into the habite of the body or joynts divers Apostems and errours of the joynt sickness are straightway present Apostems I say which with the least matter do bite no otherwise than as thorns or an enforced Dâ—â—â— do at length hasten into corrupt Pus a weeping liquor and thin corrupt sanies This indeed is the deceitful snare of Catarrhes or Rheumes which hath ensnated the Schools even unto late dayes through the various descendings defluxions falls and slidings of humours not existing And it was easie for Satan to have driven readily inclined minds seduced by Paganisme headlong hitherto no otherwise than as Astrologers have intentively noted the undeclarable scituation of the Moon and Planers have feigned excentricall ones relatively and simply the which indeed they knew to be vain and feigned for the necessitie of scituatioins found by measuring But in healing that was nearer for Satan thus to have deceived his own that is Pagans because sense an industrious and importunate perswader was at hand whom to prevent it hath been neglected while Art began in hast to be drawn unto lucre For truly from those things which are alleadged in the Treatise of Catarrhs concluded demonstratively and necessarily that is obvious to any one that there is no matter for Rheums likewise not a kitchin place wherein or where they should be prâ—pared as neither a
opening of a Vein the Blood already Co-agulated and the Aposteme conceived from thence and the ordained corrupt matter do hasten unto their bound or limit For hence from curing by cutting of a Vein there is a frequent Consumption or a Pleurisie returneth every Year which otherwise by the aforesaid Remedies are not beheld to come CHAP. LV. That the three first Principles of the Chymists nor the Essences of the same are not of or do not belong unto the Army of Diseases 1. Why the Schools leave the Market 2. Why Paracelsus hath sought other beginnings of Diseases 3. He hath theevishly transferred on himself the Invention of Basilius 4. An easie slip or fall of the Paracelsians 5. An Abuse discovered by degrees 6. Paracelsus was deceived by Chymical Rules badly understood 7. He aspired to the chiefdome of Healing 8. He failed under his Fardle or Burden 9. He was deceived also by Ulcers 10. Some Rashnesses of his 11. Robbery is covered by Sin 12. Some Rashnesses of his 13. The Doctrine of the Elements of his Archidoxis is taken notice of 14. He fleeth to the Stars least the curious should follow him running away 15. The Adeptical part of Healing 16. The Boasting of Paracelsus 17. The most perfect Distillation of Art 18. The wonderful Coal of Honey 19. Paracelsus thrown down from his pretended Monarchy 20. Fabulous meanes of Diseases 21. The Venal Blood is blown away without a Dead Head 22. What things Nature hath once refused she never retakes again 23. The Water although it be a thousand times Distilled it is not notwithstanding therefore made subbtile 24. Some Absurdities 25. The Fiction of a Microcosme in the manner of making Diseases 26. The Ambition of Paracelsus 27. Whence he had the boldnesse to invade the Monarchy 28. That the Three first Things are not in us 29. He was ignorant of the Bond of the Three first Things 30. He was ignorant of the Original of Salt 31. Some of his Rashnesses 32. His Error in the knowledge of Feavers 33. An Example that the whole venal blood doth melt by purgings 34. Diseases do not bewray the Three first Things 35. How the Three first Things are made 36. That Galen and Paracelsus were almost alike in Boldness and Error 37. The Three first Things are resisted 38. The Error of Paracelsus about the Essences of Diseases 39. That the Three first Things are not nor do operate in Diseases 40. Paracelsus came more nigh to the Truth than Galen 41. The Three first Things do not immediately support Life 42. Although the Three first Things are not Diseases yet they are Remedies 43. The manner of the Operation of Remedies is badly weighed in the Schools 44. A Quintessence or Fifth Essence is withstood 45. It hath been inconsiderately subscribed unto the foregoing Things because the Essence of Diseases hath remained unknown 46. That the Three first Things is a late Invention 47. That the Three first Things have not fore existed before their Separation but that they are bred anew 48. That Water passeth over into Oyle 49. For those Three Things to be changed into each other doth resist Principles 50. Proofs of Positions 51. Against Aristotle that there are onely two Beginnings of Bodies which are also their beginning or initiating Causes 52. The oversight or rashnesse of the Paracelsists 53. That those Three Things are not in any Bodies whatsoever 54. That the Three first Things are not in the Water as neither in Mercury 55. The Objections of some Writers of the Enterance into Chymistry 56. They proceed further 57. Paracelsus is brought on the Stage 58. An Answer 59. Whence the Immortality of Mercury is 60. The Principiative Maxims of Chymistry 61. The truth of Bacon 62. An Answer to a Paracelsian Objection 63. What the Three first Things in Bodies are 64. Other Instances in Sand a Flint c. 65. It is proved by Handycraft-operation that the Salt in Lime is not an extract of the thing contained 66. How a necessity of Offices hath invented the Three first Things 67. That the Three first Things were not natural or proper to a Body as it was a Body 68. It is proved by Handy-craft-operation that the Fire is the Workman of the Three first Things 69. The unstability of the Three first Things 70. That in the Digestion of Meats a Separation of the Three first things doth not happen 71. Why a Disease is not of the Three first things 72. That the Three first Things are not the Principles of Bodies 73. They are ultimate Things that is Principiated ones or those that are begun 74. The unconstancy of Paracelsus 75. He was ignorant from whence the Salt of the Urine is 76. An Essence is said to be after divers manners 77. A Chymical Essence 78. Some Homogeneal things do not send forth a Fifth Essence 79. A greater Virtue is in some Simples than in their extracted Essences 80. The Rashnesse of Paracelsus 81. Putrefaction also doth else-where generate a Fragrancy 82. What a Quint or Fifth Essence properly is 83. The Liquor which makes Plants fruitful 84. The Essential Oyle of Spice or Crasis of the same How the Elixir thereof may be made and that more strong by an hundred fold NOw after that I have demonstrated the Elements Complexions first Qualities and at length Tartar to have been rashly introduced into the Essential causes of Diseases by the Schools as well of the Ancients as of the Moderns I proceed to teach That the Three Beginnings of the Chymists and those of late brought into the Art of Medicine have been falsely intruded into the Essential causes of Diseases What therefore will the more refined Physitians do while as they do clearly enough behold not onely the miserable stuffe of their Remedies but also the unprosperous Helps of the howling Sick So that they have many times seriously and secretly confessed to me that nothing almost did any longer obey their indeavours and that all the curing aswel of sharp Diseases for of Chronical Diseases they have all every where long since despaired in their mind as of any of the least ones was in very deed nothing but a Cloakative cure and a meer juggling with the sick to wit whereunto unlesse as it were a certain resurrection of the Nature of the Sick doth voluntarily succeed the appointed and sure comfort of Remedies is in vain expected And moreover that hence it comes to passe that many an Old Woman is in many places far more successful in curing some defects than is the whole School of Medicine with all their discursive Speculations speculative Prescriptions Kitching Precepts of Diet confirmed by the long experience of the destruction of their Neighbours and a multiplicity of their Dispensatories When therefore the more ingenuous persons were long since wearied in the Correcting of Distempers in the vain expelling of Humours they now incline to another thing seeking a Haven from shipwrack and being easily seduced by Theophrastus Paracelsus they have
Bodies For if every thing be by its Causes and be thereby principated or made to begin it is a vain thing after the manner of Aristotle to believe other Causes and other Principles of things They are therefore Principles which never slide into each other by any whirling of successive changes For the first is stable perpetual the real beginning and prop and Seminary of Bodies And it is the last thing whereinto the dead or ended Tragedies of things do return But not a certain feigned sluggish and impossible hyle or matter But the other is the Principle of the begining of motion with every property of things to be acted under their Tragedy Yea truly seeing particular kinds do exist into general kinds no where solitary or without companions and they are individuals only which are and do subsist by a real Act. Principles ought to have been real and individually existing So indeed that the universality of the matter be individually limited by the activity of the efficient Cause Wherefore a falshood being granted to wit That all Bodies might be reduced into those Three Things by the motion of a proper dissolution yet it doth not also from thence follow that these Three things are the beginnings of Bodies Because an immediate resolving of Bodies doth not prove Principles but a diversity of kind of the matter being ultimated or brought to its last state And the last resolving of the last matter is a Witness only of the Seeds of the concrete Body but not of Principles Neither in the next place is there any reason why the Three Things may be called the First Things if three do return or may be reduced into two and lastly into one only thing Yea although in the Beginning three bodys should be seen trans-changably passing over into each other neither were they therefore to be reckoned Three rather than Two if of Three they may be presently after be made two only Therefore where the three things are found they are not the material beginnings of Bodies but the Bride-beds of the Seeds The which being worn out all things do of their own accord return into their original Element of Water But that those Three Things are not contained in any Bodies whatsoever and so are not necessary Principles is manifest because the Mercury which is drawn out of a Mettal is so single homogeneal simple and undivideable that it is impossible for Salt or Sulphur to be drawn from thence by Art or Nature But Mercury is never in any respect to be divided To wit it hath grown together onely from an elementary Water and the virtue of a most simple Mercurial Seed into an undivideable unpenetrable and unseparable Body the which among generated things hath not its like Otherwise it is like unto Water which in it self being defiled with no Seed hath on every side a co-like simplicity and impossibility of separation But inasmuch as I have sometime attributed unto the Water its Three Things that was spoken Analogically or by way of suitable resemblance as besides abstracted Spirits nothing is so alike in Bodies that it is not understood to be diversly affected according to divers dispositions and and as those dispositions must of necessity respect some diversity of kind of being For it is sufficient in the same place also to have admonished that the Heterogeneal parts of Water are in the most simple Body of an Element undivideable and really impossible by Art Nature and all Ages they consisting of the utmost simplicity Therefore although I have there called them the Three first Things of the Water yet they are not the Three of composition as the more formerly Beginnings of the Water but the Three things of heterogeniety or diversity of kind Which Heterogeniety at least mentally to be divivided into diverse things although the Water doth by the Law whereby it contains a Body contain Yet seeing it is an impossible thing that they should be drawn asunder from each other there is onely place for conjecture that although those things are not true Sulphur Salt and Mercury at least wise that they do in some sort answer unto them Therefore there is an instance in the Water no lesse than in the Mercury whereby the Three first Things are denied to be from thence accounted to be separated I seem to hear whisperings that I shall offend very many Artificers who with full cheeks do boast of the Oyle Salt Vitriol and Water of Mercury and that I shall convince them of a Lye or juggle while they promise the aforesaid things I answer That an active Imposture or deceitful juggle doth bring forth its own Imposture unworthy of life and happiness But that a passive imposture is worthy of pity But they who do not as yet discern the fallacy whereby they are circumvented do Argue First Gold they say a Body which is the most exceeding constant among sublunary things is dissolved into parts of divers kinds therefore also Mercury by a more strong reason Indeed they strain from the less to the greater Again they urge Nature hath known of the first Elements to compose Mercury therefore she hath known also to destroy it But the way of composition is not to make Mercury immediately of the Element of water but by dispositions of the matter coming between which are unlike So also the way of corruption in Mercury shall proceed by the same dispositions with a retrograde pace and a diversity of kind of matter Where thirdly Paracelsus saith the matter of things which cannot be destroyed by Art is at least wise destroyed by Nature Because all sublunary things which are not subject to death are at least wise subject to a bound or end Unto the first I answer That Gold is indeed the most constant of Bodies in the fire but it borrows the constancy of its separation from the Mercury And so if the Sulphur thereof doth include a Heterogeneal duality that doth least of all touch at the Mercury For Mercury being pure and distinct from combustible Sulphur which is more or less in the common Mercury doth plainly refuse all twoness or duality That is to say the nature of Mercury includes a perfect Homogenity or sameliness of kind But to the other I say that Nature hath indeed proceeded from the purity of the Element of water unto the composition of Mercury Yet that it cannot the admitted Seed of Mercury being once enclosed in the innermost parts of the water return to the destruction of that composed Body Because that Seed is nor mortal nor frail nor subject unto sublunary Laws as Paracelsus saith in his vexation of Chymists But the reason of immortality in Mercury is because the Seed and Fruit thereof in the constitution of Mercury are now one and the same thing Mercury in Mercury Neither hath Nature known to invent a manner of destruction in a thing so Homogeneal where the Seed hath become the Fruit by a most perfect and undestroyable or undissolveable union Seeing
and inclination of the material beginning And that is thus ordained by the profession or study of Nature that by reason of the watrie Principle being as yet not fully changed a growth out of its element and a co-placing with its mother may by an agreeing resemblance be the more fitly granted Therefore I do not admit of the Three first Things to be the constitutives of Bodies as niether universal things Which thing indeed is proper to my austereness who am not wont to frame universal Maxims from any particular thing But let him do that that will I had rather be distinct that I may the more distinctly understand For I have found for the most part that those Three Things do not proceed from Bodies out of which they are thought to be drawn unless a third trans-mutative thing being adjoyned or by composition which is rather to be attributed to the happening or supervening seed and to the trans-mutation thereby bred but not unto the first things existing within as the necessary immediate and universal Principles of Nature out of which and into which Bodies may be again resolved For they cannot give us sure credit that they are in a Body before their separation even as they are pressed out by the fire and much lesse that they fore-existed before a Body whose parts they seem to have been It is also manifest that many things are changed by Distilling neither that they are so and as much in their composed diversity of kind even as while they are made by the Fire Which thing is manifestly the one onely Example of Tartar For truly in destilling sixteen ounces of the best Tartar scarce one onely ounce of Water is drawn forth but of Salt at the most two ounces and a half the rest is wholly Oyle that is of sixteen there are almost thirteen oylie parts Yet Tartar is not crude neither doth it act as an oylie Being neither doth it burn as the bark of the Birch-tree but hath the nature of a sharp Salt wherefore by distillation the nature of a sharp Salt is changed into Oyle And then again if the Salt of Tartar be of its own accord made a Lixivium and Oyl be joyned to it indeed a Wash-ball will be thereby made which being distilled shall be accounted for the most part Water and shall cease to be the former Oyle and shall be changed into another thing For what is more clear than this handy-craft operation whereby it plainly appears that the Fire is the maker of the first Things and so that they neither are in themselves the first Things neither that they do fore-exist such is the composed Body as they are separated from thence by the Fire For truly there is not a naked separation of unlike things but a transchanging of the concrete Body by the Fire according to the activity which the Heterogeneal parts do finish among themselves But surely if those Three Things should be in all particular Bodies so that no Body could be void of them yea if all of those Three should keep their ancient disposition the Salt I say should never be made Mercury neither this likewise be made Sulphur c. Then indeed Paracelsus had apparently thought that every Body is originally composed of Salt Sulphur and Mercury But seeing there is an undoubted successive change of things through things and the least parts of Things even as also through the passages of a threefold Life those successive changes cannot denote a same linesse of the three nor of constant things whose very race it self is altogether unconstant and the perseverance thereof unstable For forthwith after Paracelsus every one almost hath subscribed to his Invention and none durst to pierce into the condition of those three things they were astonished at the sight of Heterogeneal things which are often extracted by the fire whence they being as it were fed with Lotus or a feigned Tree they suffered themselves to be misled whither Paracelsus called them But let Paracelsus learn that while Venal blood is made of Food there doth happen indeed a separation of the pure from the impure but none of the three things For as oft as a Being passeth through the last Life into a new Life the lump indeed is changed into a juyce with a dividing of the Heterogeneal parts by an extinguishment of the form and properties of the middle Life yet not into or unto the three first things but there is a proceeding unto a radical destruction with an ultimate or utmost annihilating of the former Life under which at length they draw a new Seed for a new generation For that is the way of the recourse or going back of the Night of Hippocrates unto the Day of Orpheus At leastwise it is perpetually true that those three things are never separated without the Fire and so before the art of the Fire flourished abroad those things were unknown to the Ancients And seeing that Fire and a degree thereof is wanting which is the Separator in us and whatsoever through a degree of our heat is blown away out of us doth tend unto a Dead Head or Caput Mortuum unless it be prevented by a Blas and Ferment even as I have taught above concerning the Blas of man surely the original of Diseases cannot any way be imputed unto any one or more of those Three Things I deny in the next place that Salt Sulphur and Mercury are the universal Principles of Bodies Because they neither existed before the composition of Bodies nor flowed together to the making of a mixture neither lastly by a natural resolving of Bodies into the Term of their last Life have they ever appeared in Nature but onely are brought by the Art of the fire and that onely out of some Bodies as the Seeds of things are cloathed with a material Principle of Water and are strengthened by the efficacy of their own Efficient they assume the properties partly of Salt and partly of Oyle but the Mercury of Bodies is nothing but a part of the Water being not yet great with Child by a sufficient ripeness of the Efficient Seed Therefore they do no where exist by themselves do no where obtain the Virtues of principiating Because they have not their own Natures Conditions Properties from an interchangable course whereby they might fore-exist but partly from a disposition of the Seeds flowing down into the properties of the concrete Body and partly from the digestion of the Fire and burning obtained in time of their separation For truly it is manifest that they are made reciprocally of each other by a mutual transmutation They are therefore the Last things but not the First however they may be taken For all Vegetables as long as they are not wooddy do contain a spirit of Wine as a spirit of Wine is drawn out of them they being opened by their Ferment But out of the same matter now made Wood an Aqua Vitae or Water of Life is no longer extracted
a Liquor is to be extracted which contains the Power of the Seed which Liquor although it be not fit for sowings because the Seed included in it not being able to draw a More in the Earth doth exhale yet it blesseth with a wonderful fruitfulnesse a Plant of its own likenesse being poured on its Root For the seminal Liquor contains a Crasis for propagation and therefore it is also truly Essential yet not commonly known yea not indeed to every of the most expert men Therefore I pity the progresses of extracting Quint or Fifth Essences as vain No wonder indeed if all the virtues of the thing generated do shine in the Crasis Likewise the Oyles of Spices as Oyles struggling with and being unconquered by our digestion do bring little help to wit when as they being taken within onely for the smels sake do refresh us for a little space But when the Oyle of Cynamon c. is mixed with its own fixed Salt by an Artificial and hidden Circulation of three Moneths without all water it is wholly changed into a volatile Salt doth truly expresse the Essence of its own Simple in us and doth dart it self even into the first constitutives of us But otherwise where the medicinal virtue is hid in Odours indeed strong and stubborn Odours do overcome our strength and are scarce overcome and digested by our Archeus and so they do importunately or unseasonably act in us For the Archeus Labours much that he may destroy them and imprint their Odours into the Substance wherein they are and especially if they shall be fermenting ones however they shall promise ease or refreshment yet because they do not abide that they may pierce into our first constitutives they do not afford a constant ease in healing Chiefly because they do easily decay in themselves and degenerate of their own accord therefore the rather if they are subdued by our faculties For so Mosch and sweet smelling things do die if their Crasis shall depart although their Body shall remain in it self safe and so the Crasis or constitutive temperature or mixture of a thing doth nothing touch at the dreamed Beginnings of things CHAP. LVI Of Flatus's or Windie Blasts in the Body 1 A fourfold Blas or Windie Blast 2. The Gas of Life and Wind of the World do differ in the whole Element 3. The Opinion of Galen concerning Flatus's 4. They have been ignorant of a fivefold Gas 5. The Art of the Fire what it can teach 6. The Schools are deceived 7. They contradict themselves 8. The Error of Paracelsus concerning the Limbus or Zodiack of the little World 9. His ridiculous Doctrine of a fourfold Colick and a microcosmical Identity or sameliness 10. That there is not a windie Gas in us unless it be inspired 11. Why Paracelsus hath neglected in the Womb the Cardinal Winds of the Universe 12. Paracelsus is reproved 13. His Error concerning a contracture from the Colick 14. The Causes of the aforesaid Convulsion and Palsie 15. The Life of the Muscles is concluded from the Blas of them 16 Why it is not the last that dieth 17. Unsound or mad Remedies in windie Blasts 18. Of what sort that should be which drives away or discusseth or scattereth Winds 19. They are as yet ignorant of the properties of wringings of the Bowels 20. The Woâ—â— wants its proper windie Blasts 21. Windie Blasts are not stirred up without their Bounds 22. A Flatulent or Windie Plurisie owes its rise unto a Fiction 23. We must be ashamed to have accused conceived Winds 24. Wind is accused by many to be the beginning of all Diseases whatsoever 25. How cold doth occurre hereunto 26. What is to be known in this respect 27. What is afterwards to be done 28. By whom usual Remedies profitable in Windinesses were invented 29. The Ileos or Iliack passion is an averse co-writhing of the intestine 30. That Affect hath in its Causes and manner been even hitherto unknown 31. A History hath discovered the deceit of the Schools 32. A new Doctrine concerning Flatus's or windie Blasts 33. A sixfold Flatus in us 34. No Flatus in us can be a Vapour 35. What is a wild Gas 36. Flatus's are distinguished 37. A certain windinesse is necessary for a Bowel whereof none hath hitherto taken notice 38. It is proved by a Monster 39. Some sequels flowing from thence 40. A consideration about the mean and aâ—ounding of this Flatus 41. From meats vitiated or excrements seasoned with a vitious ferment are paines of wringings in the Gutts 42. The Convulsions of a Bowel 43. Galen was Ignorant of the use of parts 44. The Schools neglecting other Flatus's have had respect onely to Farting whence a Fartisme 45. The windie blasts of a Tympany 46. The Effects of a dungie-ferment in respect to Flatus's 47. The cure of a most stinking windiness by loosening things 48. Dungs are not the voluntary putrefactions of things 49. A difference between the windy Blast of the Stomack Ileon and Colon. 50. A Scheme or Figure of the Flatus's in us 51. The Tympany is more mortal than the Dropsie Ascites 52. Two considerations touching windie Blasts 53. A consideration of Flatus's 54 A Flatus is the vice of us not of things 55. What the interchangeable course of Flatus's may respect 56. That Flatus's are made in us by a causing Agent but not by a separating one 57. Galen is withstood concerning Flatus's 58. Divers times again 59. An Error about lustful Meats 60. Venus or carnal lust hath respect unto the Spleen 61. The ingendring of Flatus's whence and how it is 62. An example of windy Blasts 63. A windie Blast doth not fore-exist in the Food 64. A notable thing concerning the Grape 65. A notable thing touching the Ferment 66. Respects of Flatus's and of the Stomack 67. The handy-craft-operation of Flatus's in a threefold Monarchy 68. The notable Gas of Tartar 69. The windinesses of meats 70. Sulphur teacheth a flatulent or Windie matter and the supposing of a Dungie Ferment 71. Whence wringings of the Guts are 72. Why poysons do for the most part make the habit of the Body to swell 73. Why Leavened or Fermented things were forbidden to the Jews 74. A dead Carcase that is drowned when it issues up out of the Water 75. A remarkable Remedy concerning the lesser hot Seeds 76. The Judgement upon the beholding of the dead Carcase of a gentile Matron 77. The vanity of a Name and Remedie driving away Windes 78. A destinction of the Volvulus or pain of the Ileos from the wringings of the Bowels AFter that the more judicious of Physitians had vainly implored aid from the Elements Humours and Stars and in the next place had in vain invoked Tartar and also the supposed beginnings of the Chymists for their helps they afterwards mediâ—ated against the will of the Galenical Schools that the Head-ach pain of the Megrim and that pain which was left of yesterdaies drunkennesse or gluttony and likewise
so as it doth if it boyle in Water Yet in an equal degree of the fire its laxative part would in like manner fly away Therefore others think that the crudity in Asarum is the effector of its loosening but these do neglect pot-herbs which are more crude than Asarum But that Hellebore is not to be ripened by boyling if Vomiting be to arise from crudity They boyl Scammony in soure things that they may mittigate it but the common sort of Physitians have already known that Scammony is thus gelded so as that if it be exposed unto the sharp vapor of Sulphur it is plainly deprived of its virtue and so much of the Scammony doth depart as it shall draw of the sharpness But I being willing from a fatherly affection to correct the furious force of Medicines do understand that the ancient faculties or virtues of things ought to remain and to be turned inward in their root or to be transchanged under their own simplicity into other endowments or qualities privily lurking in the same place under the Poyson their keeper or to be bred a new by reason of an added perfection After which manner Coloquintida turns its laxative and destructive quality inwards and a resolving faculty springs up from the bottom being a greater or singular curer of Cronical or long continuing Diseases For Paracelsus laudably attempted that thing in his tincture of the Lile of Antimony yet was he silent or knew not that the same thing was to be done in all Poysons of living Creatures and Vegetables whatsoever by their own circulated Salt For truly all the Poyson of those perisheth if they shall return into their first Beings This Hinge not the Schooles but Physitians chosen of God whom the Almighty hath chosen from their Mothers Womb in time to come shall know and he shall make a difference of the Sheep from the Goats Simples therefore of great powers or virtues are not to be gelded nor mortified but to be bettered by Art by reason of the extracting of hidden faculties or by a suspension or setting aside of the poysonsomeness or by a substituting of one endowment in the roome of another by commanding specifical adjuncts These things are for those to whom it hath not been granted to taste the power of the greater circulated Salt For some things do by adjuncts wax milde their cruelty being laid aside do become neutral to wit through virtues being partakingly assumed on both sides Neither therefore may we borrow these adjuncts from the received Dispensatories of the Shops which do not teach a bettering or even corrections but a destruction of things or surely they afford nothing but correctingmockeries For Example Marquess Charles Spinelli late General of the Genoans when as he had walked late on foot about the City having thorowly viewed all the Walls commanded the Physitians to be called and said unto them that he had sometimes laboured with the Falling-sickness and was cured by me and that now and then he as yet felt a giddiness in his Head since he had come out of Aquitane into Liguria or Genoa by crossing the Sea A circle of Physitians next morning gives him a scruple of white Hellebore to drink and for a correction thereof added as much of Annise-seed presently after half an hour he Vomiteth and afterwards he invokes the aid of me being absent and accuseth his Murderers saying Helmonti mio voi me lo dicesti gli Medici t'ucciderano Oh my friend Helmont thou toldst me this that these Physitians will kill thee He was silent and after two hours his Stomack being first contracted and then having a convulsion throughout his whole body he dies the Physitians seek excuses and the Earth covered their fault For so the Confections of the Schooles throughout their Dispensatories do carry many foolish correctives into the fardle with them Opiates have not things especially adjoyned unto them but laxatives for the most part Ginger Mace Annise and whatsoever things might cure wringings of the bowels from a later effect of loosening Medicines Fie with how unpunished a liberty doth ignorance rage on mortals How little do they understand their own Hippocrates If those things are taken away which is meet that is which hurt and burden the sick feels himself better and doth easily bear it For seeing those things which hurt within do now and then scarce weigh a dram every purge which is directed for health ought to be an evacuation either unperceivable or at leastwise exceeding moderate and that with a restoring of the strength or faculties For this is that which the sick do easily bear with profit or help The Correctories therefore of Medicines are unprofitable patcheries and a weight described by the Schooles without the knowledge of things and so destructive at least to the Medicines if not together also to the sick This part of Medicine requires a diligent and expert Secretary of Nature Because in that part the most ample riches of Medicines and guilded houshold-stuffe of Glaura is found The Schooles had in times past learned of our Philosophers that most excellent virtues do inhabite in Simples over which destructive poysons were appointed chief Keepers thereupon their rashnesse succeded which co-mingled express Poysons and manifest Corrosives with Antidotes hoping that by the goodness and quantity of adjuncts the malignity of the Poyson was to be overcome as if it were convenient for health for a pestilentious Glove to be brought unto guests into a chamber filled with healthy aire For I do not here accuse the Viper in Triacle without which to wit this hotch-potch of Simples is as it were dead For the flesh of Vipers is in it self unhurtful and without Poyson yea an Antidote against Poyson But little balls prepared thereof in the boyling do leave all their state in the Pottage which the raw flesh did keep I complain in this place of Arsenical things which are Magistrally as they call it put into an Antidote For the Schooles by reason of the rashness of boldness or self-confidence presume to deserve credit and to have placed the glory of Studies in the Authority of their possession Neither is it alwayes that even the most excellent virtues do abide or dwell about destructive Poysons in the same subject so as that these are covered over by Poysons For Arsenick and Orpiment c. How much soever they may be fixed and dulcified or made sweet yet they are never to be taken inwardly however others shall otherwise perswade They onely prevaile without and do kill and tame other Poysons of Ulcers if they themselves have been first subdued The corrections therefore of Medicines are without the knowledge of properties parts and agreements For what doth a spice Ballance in respect of a Poyson If the whole body of man being strong and full of life doth presently faint or fall down at the stroke of the tooth of a Viper Shall Wolfes-bane wax mild through the admixing of the clove Shall Coloquintida cease to
thirst remaining safe For that thirst doth proceed as a forraign excrement doth cause the nourishable juice of the stomack to melt For truly while I describe my feelings or perceivances I am not so much besides my self as that I shall deny the excess of an external heat to burn and cause a wound or ulcer or that cold excelling doth mortifie as if it did burn But in the Dream proposed I onely perceived them as they are serviceable to the speculation of healing Therefore the examples of excessive heat and cold are like a sword but not to be referred among the occasional and internal causes of diseases to be considered by a Physitian If indeed according to the speculations of Medicine health is expected by the removal of those wherefore the speculation of external and antecedent Causes is not curative but onely now and then significative and directive For a wound being once inflicted although the sword be taken away the wound is not healed neither is the fire to be taken from the hearth although it hath at sometime burnt or scorched some-body in the same place For truly the causes of Diseases are inward as they are connexed occasions therefore the consideration and removal of those is truly medicinal But the Schools when they saw the fire to burn its objects likewise also cold to mortifie and destroy and so the body of man by those external qualities excelling to be diversly disturbed they for that cause thought that Effects which should have heat adjoyned unto them were raised up by fire and in this respect that in Feavers two Elements did strive in us whereof the Water should alwaies obtain the former part of the victory but the Fire the latter part thereof to wit that the Fire did cause Erisipelas's the Prune or burning coal the accute or Persian fire the burning Feaver c. That it did likewise harden by drying or exsiccation of Schirrus's Stones Bones and Knots They have also decreed Remedies beseeming such rules by contrarieties not knowing after what sort the spirit of life may stir up heats and colds without fire or icy cold because neither from the Elements of our body or from feigned humours But they have on both sides neglected the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or violent assailant of Hippocrates Even as I have sometime by one example of a thorn thrust into the finger demonstrated wherein the Heat Pain Inflamation Feaver do not efficiently proceed from the fire of the thorn but because the sensitive Spirit doth grievously bear the forreign thorn So indeed heat and cold are accidents impertinent to the nature of a Feaver even as in the Liver are felt its heats because in the same place there are its thorns and the heat is not the cause but the effect of the thorn And therefore the alterations which do happen in the vital Family-admistration and do cease in dead carcases do not depend on the fire or icyness of the body or humours but on the Beginnings of life Yea if the Schools had touched at the matter as it is they had found that natural artificial Baths c. do not dry and burn us up but rather moisten us unless their heats are inordinate and of daily continuance yea neither then indeed otherwise than because more is consumed than is received doth the body accidentally wither At length I presently after the first qualities perceived the theevish adulteries of Merchants wherewith they load defile estrange and substitutively dissemble foreign Medicines or Drugs who have no need of my Doctrine because they are such as are not moved with the fear of Hell I presently after perceived two distinct Savours at least of things if not sometimes three or four one to wit whereby things are sharp bitter salt c. but the other which is called specifical being appropriated to the seed The first therefore I perceived to be the dignities and offices of Salts not indeed of Salts separated from the three first things or as they say drawn from corporeal Beginnings but of Salts glistening in their composed body But the other of the savours I perceived to be the seminal nature of Odours performing or at least unfolding the office of Forms in concrete bodies for Salts as being most sensible do first offer themselves to the taste whereunto therefore Hippocrates hath attributed the knowledges of diseases to wit bitter salt sharp and brackish pointing forth diseases But heats and colds he rather understood to be subsequent affects or passions than diseases But I do ascribe their judgement to the taste by reason of the aforesaid tastable qualities wherein for the most part a more profound power or faculty sits and containing the seminal and efficient cause But not that therefore the judgement concerning diseases doth belong to the tongue and the pallate but I name it the taste by reason of the tastable qualities Otherwise it is the feeling wherewithal the Instruments are strongly endowed whose sensitive force by an approximation of touching makes the signs of friendship or enmity about the hidden thing perceiveable After this manner therefore I perceived that it is the offices of the salts exceeding in force which do unfold the vertues of the subordinate forms of their concrete body and carry them unto the Archeus as it were their object whereon they act Therefore I perceived that Cures as well by Mediciues as by Nature are made by an appeasing of the disturbed Archeus and the removal of the seminal and diseasie character produced by the Archeus This indeed I have perceived to be the nearest safest and highest or chiefest curing But that which succeedeth by the help of secrets is busied about the taking away of the product And therefore I have perceived that Arcanum's do operate as Salts Indeed such cures do happen by removing of that which is hurtfull and by adding that which is defectuous for else those things which do hinder increases or appropriations have rather a regard unto prevention than unto curing it self but hurtfull things are taken away by resolving cleansing exhaling or expelling which properties are agreeable unto Salts But the removals of that which is hurtfull are not duly wrought by poisonous melting and putrifactive things as neither by the withdrawings of the venal blood and life But the adding of that which is deficient I have perceived not to be done by a proper means and therefore that we go back or decline by little and little through great want of the Tree of Life the which be it spoken of the vital faculties but not of the want of the venal blood which is restored by the kitchins But I have perceived that Nature doth voluntarily rise again and repair some of her defects if she shall be made to sit up after her prostrating To which end also balsamical and tinging things do help I perceived also that in the stomack is bred a soure salt partly volatile and partly fixed But that both are afterwards changed by their
have ascended into a poysonsomnesse by addittaments But these seeing they are not admitted within the root of the Mercury do operate onely without about the Sulphur and are there variously disposed according to the manner of the receiver At length I perceived That there was a sixfold difference of Digestions in us and that the three former of them were busied about the disposing of the matter appointed for to nourish the which although they do truly transmute yet they are sent before rather for a preparatory disposing than for a vital espousing thereof For truly in the Fourth Digestion a vital power is communicated to the venal blood and so the Controversie is decided whether the arterial blood be quickned For the venal blood is not truly enlivened until it be made arterial blood The which is drawn through the partition of the Heart into the Arterie Aorta for no other end but that in that Buttery it may be endowed with Life and informed with a mind But we are nourished by both bloods even as we have our original of the seed of a twofold Sex For perhaps the Mysterie of the Lyturgie is hence known why a little Water is mixed with much Wine That the Water may pass into venal blood and the Wine into arterial blood I perceived therefore That the Fifth Digestion was plainly occupied about the participative communion of Life But Lastly That the sixth did operate by a dispositive quality but did rejoyce in an assimilating ferment and that inducing humanity Therefore external aides are stirred up and do operate by another quality than internal ones Fat or gross persons are taken with Paines or Crampes or Convulsions of the Tendons the which notwithstanding the grease of man being outwardly over-smeared doth alay For the Sixth Digestion is wholly assimilative therefore it indeavours to change the grease brought on it into its own vital aire But the internal grease of fat things being now subdued by an assimilating ferment is kept without action But the Sixth Digestion enters into the middle Life of the external anointed grease the which our Archeus doth therefore appropriate to himself which Life and its properties are hidden in the last Life of the internal grease Moreover I perceived after what manner a Cantharides doth embladder in living People but not in a dead carcase as neither doth it raise up a burnt Escharre in the dead carcase although it dissolves the dead carcase no otherwise than as Calx vive poudered doth resolve Cheese For the Cantharides as long as it remains dry doth not act but is moistened by an unsensible eflux of our dew then first it begins to itch whence the Archeus under the Epidermis or outward skin is furiously inflamed not much otherwise than as under an Erisipelas the burning Coal or burning Fever and so the Cantharides begins in the Epidermis and an Escharotick in the skin the same which a Gangreen doth at length finish in the habit of the Body For Causticks do at first crisp the skin the which afterwards they resolve into a muscilage after they have fully moistened For then they do not onely sharpen our heat but also they assume the strength of a proper corroding Then I say they do not onely make an Escharrhe which ariseth from an inflaming of the Archeus but do melt the whole Lastly I perceived also that Amulets or preservative Pomanders things bound about the Head and hung about the Body do act by the virtue of influence and that directive without the evaporation of those things which indeed do reside in the more fixed Bodies Although there are other things hung on the Body which are by little and little diminished of their Virtues because they dismiss a Vapour out of them But things tied to the Head or Body are Bony Horney Animals and Plants but others are Mettallick Stony Salts Transparent things or Thick or Dark things But Mettals are seldome Amulets unless they are as yet opened or exalted by an external adjunct Because they have a dividable Sulphur in them But in Stones there is great virtue but of Stones some are transparent Looking-glasses but some are thick or dark ones As Corral Coraline the Turcois the Jasper But in clear Stones the Evestrum or Ghost of Life being well or ill affected doth reverberate To wit the life rejoyceth to be reflexed in a clear glass whereby it is then made like to the Understanding which in its own light is altered after the manner of a Chamelion at the assimilation of Objects Neither also have I in vain perceived Gemms to be as it were thick Glasses well polished Because the native and natural Endowment that is in them from the nature of the Glasse doth more powerfully reflect the vital beam communicated unto it For something is continually and necessarily discussed or blown out of us which is not yet plainly destitute of the participation of Life That very thing doth keep the activity of its own sphear about us the which while it findeth in the polished Glass it easily reflecteth on the whole Body from whence it issued for thereby sympathetical Remedies or Things were first made known But afterwards when it was known that things tied about the Body were applied in operating by virtue of a Glasse there were thereupon boughtie or convex concavous c. figures of Looking-glasses presently bethought of whereunto Gentilisme joyned Hieroglyphicks that by a figure they might denote the sign of a hidden virtue Superstition in posterity thereby encreased who anointed Gamahen Talismanicks and devilish Scurrilities of that sort Thinking that Figures had not indeed the virtues of a Sign but of a Cause But transparent Glasses do receive an Evestral or Ghostlike faculty the which although they do not reflect as otherwise dark ones do yet they approach nearer unto the nature of life or the shining glasse Finally I perceived that the diversity of Effects the end and appropriation of Medidines did not proceed from the fourfold fiction of Complexions but from the very powers of Simples themselves whose Election dose and preparation have therefore stood neglected because they have not been hitherto searched into in their root and manner After the perceivances of all these things at length another Spirit took from me the bottle which the other had given me And with great grief I then perceived all the necessities of Death in me unfit to be declared Whereby I presently returned unto my self neither could I receive comfort but when I truly knew that all things were acted onely by a Dream and because that if I ought to rehearse the virtues of things I could not better performe it than if I had as it were felt all those things within This one thing at least I did moreover remember that Chymical things did rather act by the force of Art than by the native power of Nature because their beginnings were brought forth and changed by the Fire To wit Chymistry separates fixed things from things not fixed
there collected but also the Fabrick of hurtful Images is there Stamped Because they can no where be more readily framed than from the Soul the Inmate of those parts For there is none but feels Horrours Fears Tremblings Anger 's Wroths Sorrows Sighs and every Perturbation of concupiscible Affects to arise and be stirred about the mouth of his Stomack For if a Gun be unexpectedly discharged who doth not there feel a sudden leaping of some fear Who in the next place is there who being ready to sit down at a Table and endowed with a notable appetite of eating doth not perceive if at sometime a sorrowful Message be brought unto him that all sharpness of eating is presently suspended Therefore the Faculties do there flourish whose Effects are there felt For I have oft-times seen Women in whom sudden Fear at another time also in whom notable Grief had raised up the Falling-sickness Elsewhere also in whom a lingering and continued Sorrow had moved a Hypochondrial Madness yea and elsewhere had caused the Scrophulus or Kings-Evil So a Fear of the Plague doth very often create the Plague Even as a sudden fear of Death hath sometime killed the Character of the Gout Pride also hath often made men mad I have also known others who having suffered Reproach and not being able to revenge the same have suddenly fallen into an Apepsia or Unconcoction into the straights of an Asthma and into Beatings Perplexities of Anguishes and Oppressions of the Heart Others who from a suddain sense of Reproach or Contempt have presently rushed into an Apoplexie And likewise I have known those that have been wearied with long Grief have violently rushed into a Dropsie Jaundise and Tumors of the Spleen Likewise very many of both Sexes who from sudden Anger have departed into an Apoplexie but others who have gone into divers head-long Griefs of Contractures The Fabricks of which Diseases are manifestly felt about the Orifice of the Stomack For therefore a certain small Feaver as it were a Diarie or Daily one doth precede the Fits of the Gout under which a Character springs up which is dismissed from the Stomack into the Joynts that it may tyrannize in the same place An Apoplexie therefore whether it break forth from an Inordinate Life or next from Anger or Grief yet at leastwise it alwaies ariseth from the stomack and is darted into the Head For the Jaundise doth in no other place more flourish than in the Court of the Stomack whence it stirs up its Anguishes and Sighs denoting that there the Game of its Cruelty is played Wherefore also I have taught before that how much soever Vulnerary Potions may restrain the framing of corrupt Pus and fear of Accidents in the utmost part of the Foot yet not that therefore Vulnerary Drinks do enjoy a larger Priviledge otherwise than other Medicines do For they do not materially hasten unto the remote Wound when as the while other Medicines are ignorant of a passage to the Spleen in favour of a Quartan Ague Which things the School of Medicine hath not hitherto known although they are the Foundations of Medicinal Art Because they are those things which do not onely respect the virtue or force of Medicines and the Expedition Application and Appropriation of these But notwithstanding besides the manner of acting and hope from thence resulting they declare the principal efficient of Diseases The Ignorance therefore of which thing alone hath caused a sloath and drowsiness in the Physitian but in the sick Despair together with a sorrowfull apprehension of Griefs and Discommodities and at length alas for grief have brought forth so many Widdows with mournful Orphans unto the fowl disgrace or base esteem of Medicinal Affaires But so far as it respecteth the choice of Medicines it hath listed me to wander thorow the rancks of Minerals Vegetables and Animals and to take them in their own simple Integrity as they sprang forth from Nature and those again diversly to agitate and so to divide them into Salt Sulphur or Fatness and Mercury or a seminal Juice And first of all the natural endowed Virtues or Faculties of things which the Divine Goodness hath given from a Gift for the Sick do for the most part want the testimony of tasts so that even by that same sign alone they do bewray that they are endowedly instilled by God for the use of Mortals neither that they do clearly appear but unto those to whom God hath given his gifts of the Holy Spirit and hitherto he hath withdrawn them from the knowledge of unworthy Physitians who to the little ones and ignorant ones of this World doth reveal those things which he hath hidden from the great ones For there are Gifts dispersed in the Exercise of Simples by which they ascend unto the largnesse of a general kind So indeed as things appropriated and specifical are acknowledged to be directed by God unto the every way Curing of any kind of Diseases For the Stone for broken Bones is of a late Invention which owes its Name unto the Cure of a broken Bone But it is unconquered by Fires nor Calcinable but notable in its unsavoury taste being untamed by the Stomack Yet it is a wonder how much it shews its self Victor as well about the Bowels and inward Wounds as in the outmost parts about the Fractures of Bones From hence First of all it plainly appears That on the Digestion and care of the Stomack do the Cares and Governments of the Sixth Digestion depend throughout its whole 2. That there is no necessity for a Medicine to be derived unto the place affected 3. That a Medicine onely by touching at the Archeus of the Stomack is able to Cure remote Diseases in the Body 4. That there is no need that for to Cure the Agent doth touch the remote Patient 5. That as the Stone for broken Bones or the Stone of Crabs doth finish its Cure in the Stomack after the same manner also do Purgative Medicines and all other Medicines whatsoever operate CHAP. LXXIV The Squadron of Diseases according to their Occasional Causes A Primary A Secondary Diseasie Being in an inordinate Archeus For whether it be Primarily raised up from the Idea of a Man or doth immediately arise from the Idea of the Archeus it always at length Retires into the Inne of the Archeus Things Received Things cast in by Witches Things inspired by Endemicks Things received by violent Invaders Things taken In Drink  In Meat  In Poyson  In Medicine  Things Heteroclital or of an irregular kind The Torture of the Night  An unequal Strength  Barrennesse Things Retained Things left or Excrements in the 1 2 3 or 6 Digestion Things transchanged in the 1 2 3 or 6 Digestion Things transmitted from one Digestion into another Mention is made of these by the Antients under the name of an Abstracted Quality or Relation of Terms and so they are onely acknowledged by way of a
understands Paracelsus with me But seeing that Sulphur is not translated that it may be turned into arterial Blood yea and restore and renew the implanted Spirit of the Members although it be in it self the top of the Wonders of Nature yet then it doth only as it were pass thorow the two former digestions and doth not satisfie its calling for which it shineth with so famous Endowments And so even from hence it is easie to be seen that long Life is not but for choise or chosen Men nor indeed for all of them not so much because the youth of Princes doth shorten the thred of their Life in fleshly lust and pleasures and so that a remedy for long Life is received and applyed to the Life after the manner of the receiver But especially because Adeptists are wanting to whom alone it is given to unmask these kind of Secrets from their husks I suppose indeed that this is a masculine Mettal because it doth easily suffer its Sulphur to be sequestred from it and this separated Sulphur is dissolved in the Oyl of Cinnamon or Mutmeg or in the Oyl which drops out of Turpentine till that by boyling it is coagulated into the best Rosin But at least-wise although the Sulphur thus dissolved hath notable virtues yet because it draws a stinking Odour and reserveth a resistence of the dissolved Sulphur neither can it pass thorow unto the inmost parts but can only act as it were in passing thorow and by its touching stir up by the way a superficial remembrance of its gift Therefore it more differs from the wine of Life than a Carbuncle doth from a flint Yet if that melted Sulphur be so united in the Oyl of the Spice that however stinking it shall pass through an Alembick and afterwards be after a due manner circulated with its Alcaly or fixed Salt and at length doth pass into a volatile Elixir of Salt it doth after some sort imitate the faculties and virtues of the wine of Life and Essence of the Members For truly that Elixir being rectified into the best Spirit of Wine doth loose all its stink and resume something of its natural or proper endowment that it at leastwise takes away difficult and Chronical Diseases yet it doth not ascend unto the highest perfect act of the Bowels that it may be the renewed Essence of the Members CHAP. LXXVIII In Words Herbs and Stones there is great Virtue THere is a place in the holy Scriptures which taketh Stones for mineral Bodies Words indeed so far as commanding from a supernatural Power they do command Creatures the which because they are subject they do also obey And then the virtue of Herbs is that of Medicines but it doth not comprehend Herbie Meats There is therefore a medicinal faculty of Plants Simple indeed but most excelling so that for the most part it ascends into a degree of Poysonsomness Because it exceeds the ampleness of our Nature and therefore also is troublesome or offensive unto us For Pot-herbs Pulses and corny Plants ought to be wholly subdued and dissolved in the Stomach that is in the seat of the Soul into which while they light with unbroken virtues they do also by their new Hospitality oppress the same with their Laws For so the seat it self doth as yet labour about rude Simples and in operating doth undergo the Crudities Damages and Troubles of entertained Vegetables For in this respect whatsoever is not rightly subdued in the Stomach after its aforesaid troubles is commanded out by the Bowels as an unprofitable and hurtful excrement Wherefore the more cruel Plants while they do not promise nourishment nor are directly drawn into meats or foods if they shall not notably hurt at least-wise they are totally sequestred and are driven forth with labour and anguishes the which hath hitherto plainly appeared in a Quartane Ague which hath notably deluded the promised help of Physitians and hope of Medicines For although the occasional matter of a Quartane doth stick only about the Spleen and in the neighbouring places of the Stomack Yet the Medicines of Vegetables have not yet come unto the threshold of a Quartane In the mean time the more stronger Vegetables seeing they have obtained degrees beyond the strength of our Nature they are for the most part for that cause Despised or Gelded and so by corrective means are plainly alienated and do degenerate and so pass over into a forreign Family Many also have in vain attempted to seperate the Poysonous Power from the appropriated ones lurking under them However it is at this day accustomed to be those Medicines are the more strong horrid troublesome neither are they admitted into our more inward parts because they rise up against and weaken or defile our vital Faculties and do every way bring with them Anguishes as Companions For although they depart not into nourishments in us nor are the more inwardly admitted than to enter the threshold it self yet by their only touching and naked passage yea and as it were by a deaf defilement of aspect they alter the Archeus and subject and snatch away this Archeus into their own client-ship This is the cause why the more strong remedies of Vegetables are for the most part suspected of cruelty and poysonsomness Which things are as yet more clearly beheld in mineral secrets and the more profound Medicines Because they are those which perform their Offices and attain the scopes of their Endowments by no co-mixture of them but as it were by aspect alone For so Mothers do dip a piece of wollen cloath in a co-mixture of Argent-vive or Quick-silver and patch it up between the girdle or circle of Garments knowing that although Quick-silver doth not evaporate any thing out of it self for it is a thing so homogeneal that it is not to be divided into a heterogeneal part and that which is unlike to it self yet that it doth hinder the presence and generation of Lice throughout the whole Body I have also described after what manner common Argentvive may be reduced into a most white or Snowie lump if the spirit of Vitriol be distilled from it The which Spirit indeed is coagulated upon Mercury and is transchanged into an Alume but separable by washing or cleansing from the Argent-vive To wit which Argent-vive becomes a yellow Powder which easily returns into its antient Quick-silver and of equal weight with it self So indeed the whole spirit of Vitriol being in it self most sharp is by a bare touching of the Mercury and without any radical co-mixture of them both converted into an aluminous Salt and that shall be done a thousand times yet it looseth nothing of the weight and nature of Argent-vive For Argent-vive doth without any participation of it self or from it self yea and without any radical co-mixture from it self change whatsoever of a Sulphurous Spirit it shall touch which radical or beaming co-mixture of Argent-vive is as yet more to be admired To wit if Argent-vive be
Spirit far from the Mouth as that their dissolutions by Vegetable are difficult they promise full Hospitals wherein the continual mournings or waylings of the unfortunate Sick do dolefully sound Wherefore from hence also every one doth almost dayly behold in his own House a stubborn and uncessant Disease amongst those of his Family and Physitians are made the Comedy of stages because they have scarce done any thing worthy of thanks For some of them confess their own and their Authors weaknesses and many do unwillingly flee unto Chymical unknown Remedies most of them abounding with their adultery and ravishment they fly back to Books not likewise to Furnaces for their unexperiences do promise most ample Fruits and they boast of all illegitimate and ridiculous Remedies The which while University Men do not understand and on the other side they do behold their withered Galen so destitute they as full of doubt flee over unto Cauteries sharpish Fountains and Baths Alas for grief what an unhappiness to the Sick and a vain refuge to themselves hath so great a stumbling of darkness in the Schools produced I will therefore shew that the text and that great boasted of virtue doth by the name of Stones understand all Minerals wholly and mettals the Marrow of these before the rest Because they are those things which do scarce shew themselves in any other Image than that of small Stones or great Stones For indeed this is the most rich and constant off-spring and chief treasure of Nature So that therein the conjunctions of the Stars are laid up or hidden and moreover in speaking properly and out of the profound Idiotisme of the Gentiles the Stars do excel or are chief over Meteours only causally but Mettals in their Excellencies or Remedies do far exceed the Stars For truly I have taught according to the text of the holy Scriptures That the Stars are not unto us for Causes but only for Signs Seasons Dayes and Years Neither is it lawful for Man to extend the Offices of the Stars any further Wherefore I have never in my desire married the number of the Stars unto the wandring Stars or Planets as neither have I enclosed both their Offices and Dignities in a like equality or resemblance For as they are at a far distance from each other so also they have unlike Offices and ends of Offices divided from each other But this one thing I willingly admit of to wit that Mettals do exceed Plants and Minerals in healing by long stades or distances And therefore that Mettals are certain clear or shining glasses not indeed by reason of their brightness but rather because that as oft as their virtues are opened and set at liberty they do act by an endowed light and a vital co-touching Mettals therefore do operate after the manner attributed to the Stars to wit by an Aspect and the touching of an alterative Blas which things will by handicraft-operation more clearly appear For Mettals themselves are Glasses the most excellent off-spring I say of the inferiour Globe to wit upon which the whole central virtue hath for some Ages before prodigally poured forth its treasure that it might most rightly espouse this liquor of the Earth this duggy nourishment and this off-spring of divine providence unto the ends which the weakness of Nature did require Therefore the Glasses of Gold Silver Mercury Lead Copper Iron and Tin and the fire-stones of these are not yet shut up or closed c. But I call those shining Glasses which have such a force of piercing and enlightning the Archeus from his errours furies and defects that they restore him into a brightness through the tincture of an endowed perfection For although these Minerals are not for food or of the condition of the Body of Man Yet they have the internal faculty of a Glass and a Power most chiefly efficacious co-touching with or very near to the Archeus of man being entire and appeased such as was the Archeus before the mind was conceived the which mind indeed was afterwards estranged from its right path after that the sensitive Soul wherein the mind sits drew the government of the Body on it self the which indeed was wholly frail and brutal in it self But in shining Glasses for a distinction to wit of Vegetables which do not shine a certain figure of our former immortality hath as yet remained resident and in this respect those Glasses are not only communicated but are willingly received by our Archeus Yea and which more is the restauration of the Archeus should the longer continue if the Glasses themselves were not presently banished which thing is manifest in the preparation of Copper Iron c. These things concerning the Tree of Life I do prosecute in the Book of long Life that there may be a stable Remedy transchangeable into mans Nature to be taken from ones childhood especially as long as the growing faculty doth flourish This Remedy I say doth exceed the force of a shining Glass for long Life but not likewise for a healthy Life Furthermore whatsoever is further to be spoken concerning Stones that was either so far as they do partake of a certain Metallick Sulphurous Tincture or of a Mineral Salt But as a mineral Being is neither for food nor nourishment neither could it be Vital or for Life but before that I shall pass over unto Arcanums which is called the great virtue of Stones in this place surely it is profitable to enter into the very seat of the Body and inwardly to view how much any Remedy can there operate To which end that which I have already said above comes first in our way To wit that the Stomack doth not coct any thing but as from a single aime it doth from thence at length frame a nourishment for its whole Body and for that very cause it hath an intention to make thereof a nourishable Liquor to wit venal Blood and afterwards a spermatick Humour fit for the nourishing of the chief constituting parts So that it may be turned into a substance fit for the nourishment and increase of the parts To wit as long as they are appointed within the bound designed for growth or increasing From whence it necessarily also follows that none but fit and foody matters concocted and digested by the Stomack are transmitted into the more remote shops of the digestions Wherefore I have first of all withdrawn every Plant by whatsoever cruelty being infamous from the border of the Mesentery because every thing that is unfit for these borders is for that very cause driven downwards by the Stomack and adjoyned unto the excrements But whatsoever hath now passed over into Chyle hath presently laid aside every strange quality whereby it may act as it were by choice But if from Magnum Oportet any kinde of quality of its antient concrete Body shall as yet remain surely that is drowsie feeble sluggish loose and vain and therefore it doth for the most part deceive Physitians in
that which was for coagulating of Aqua vitae 2. That in coagulating it had separated the sluggish and watery part which swum upon the aforesaid white lump perhaps no otherwise than as in coagulation of Duelech from the rest of the body of the urine and so that it perfected its coagulation in the middle of the waters 3. That the curdy Runnet or spirit of Urine had undissolveably knit it self to the spirit of Wine 4. That it is not a perpetual truth the which notwithstanding the Schooles hand forth instead of a Chymicall Maxime that every sharp coagulating Body did by the same endeavour dissolve its own Compeere 5. That the spirit of Urine had not coagulated it self in the Glass according to the powder of a beaten Duelech but onely that it had mingled and coagulated it self together with another thing namely with the spirit of Wine 6. That if therefore it had met with an earthly spirit it had also contracted wedlock with the same so as that of both spirits it had made a stony Body 7. I likewise learned after what manner the spirit of urine might coagulate another spirit within the urine 8. That such an association is not a certain naked co-mixture of parts but an undissolvable wedlock of unity a certain substantial transmutation a production of a new Being by an Agent and a Patient into a neither Body This experiment gave me an entrance for a diligent search into the Disease of the Stone Yet I as yet remained wandring about For after giving of thanks I transferr'd my self into a meditation how many ways a thing might be condensed or coagulated in the Universe For Ice first presently offered it self unto me wherein the water incrusts it self for fear of cold and from a primitive action but is not actively congealed by cold Even as elsewhere concerning the Elements But other Bodies which are believed to be mixt as they bewray themselves to be the true Fruits of water by the same Zeal and Tenour are they congealed by cold occasionally For so Bones and a Sword are more easily broken in time of cold Seasons than in time of heat or Summer 2. Any kind of Salts according to their Species and inbred property while their brine being not sufficientts dryed up is left in the cold are separated from their water and become corny 3. If Salts shall subdue any thing by gnawing it they pass over from their native condition into a neither Body and are coagulated For so the Tartar of Wine Sope Borace c. are coagulated 4. And then Muscilages being thickned by the wedlock of their seeds and resolved from their own Body become Glews Gums Solder c. 5. But if a muscilage or slimy juyce carries a co-mixed fat with it it is coagulated in both respects So are Aloes a Chibal Pitch Rosin Gum Ammoniacum Frankinsence Myrrh Mastich the Gum Opopanax Sarcocolla Assa Elemi c. 6. Earth converting into a salt or muscilage if it be dryed is condensed and waxeth hard 7. A mineral Salt that was bred in the earth by burning stonifies into stones shells or sheards and earthen Pots 8. The which if they are urged by a stronger degree of heat they at length vitrifie or become Glass 9. The watery Leffas or planty juyce of the Earth by vertue of the seeds is hatdened into Woods Herbs c. 10. So Water by vertue of a seed is made a rocky stone 11. A muscilage being joyned to a powder or dust makes sand-stones but with dust and lime it now dissembles divers Marbles 12. Whatsoever lime dissolved comprehends or encloseth in it self that thing coagulates with it Because there are in Lime two salts the one a lixivial Alcali salt and the other an acide or sharp one which two salts while they demolish each other are coagulated together 13. Mettals Fire-stones Sulphurs etc. do by vertue of their seeds obtain their own and proper coagulations 14. Also most things through an inbred Glew do voluntarily grow together which afterwards by drying do harden As Blood Cheese the white of an Egg Varnish c. 15. Glass is an earthen stone consisting of an Alcali salt The which while being fired it is dissolved makes the sand or powder of stone that is not calcinable nor otherwise capable of powring abroad to melt by corroding and so they are both together turned into a transparent lump Therefore the Lime-stone or rocky stone by reason of its sharp salt is unfit for Glass because the lime thereof destroyes the Glassifying Alcali and there is made a certain neutral thick or dark Body Lime therefore against the will of Galen very much differs from ashes To wit because this separates the Lixivium or lye from it self but the other containes a sharpnesse that is not separable from the whole Whereby it being at length burnt by too much fire is Glassified throughout its Lixivial part being unfit for Building According to Geber Because all fixed Bodies are at length Glassified with Glassifying things Cheese also as it is curdled by moderate sharpnesse so it is resolved with an eminent sharpness For the pating of Cheese dissolves with dry Calx vive or quick-Lime but not with the Alcali or Lixivial salt of Ashes From all the aforesaid particulars I have collected that the coagulation of Duelech is singular and irregular Lime also doth by degrees stonifie in the middle of the waters as its aforesaid salts do coagulate each other But the body of Man as it doth not coagulate a rocky stone so neither doth it endure a Calx or Lime-stone in the Bladder For indeed that admirable Coagulum or Runnet alwayes stuck before mine eyes whereby more swiftly than in the twinkling of an Eye the spirit of urine had condensed the spirit of Wine into a lump Therefore I discerned that all other Coagulations had nothing common with Duelech Wherefore I determined to examine Spirits Therefore first I distilled Horse-pisse But surely the spirit thereof wanted that Runnet Wherefore I noted with the highest admiration the singularity of mans Urine Afterwards I observed that the spirit of Sulphurs or of Salts being sharp would with an Alcalized body be made earthly For so with Iron is made drosse rust a cankered rust Ceruss c. And these Paracelsus rashly judgeth to be Tartars or the separated impurities of things over-covered with their own and that an inward Runnet when as otherwise they are nothing else but the astonishment of two mutual Agents to wit when both their strengths are spent Afterwards I long examined Salts throughout every of their Analysis or Re-solution and I discerned that the spirits of all salts were sharp except Alcalized ones and those of essential Sulphurs in Vegetables Whose saltish tartnesses indeed are fat and sulphurous neither readily reducible into a salt unlesse by a tedious inversion or turning in and out of the principles which salts being then as it were elixirated do represent the true and highest Crasis or constitutive
with Salt-peter much more speedily Moreover Stones Gemmes Sands Marbles Flints c. through an Alcali being joyned unto them are glassified but if they are boyled with the more Alcali they are indeed resolved into moisture and being resolved they by an easie labour of their acide spirits are separated from the Alcali in the weight of their former powder of stones But these never come to the urine as neither are they profitable for breaking of the stone But Rocky or Chalky stones which have an inflamed Sulphur in them are calcined indeed but are not easily made Glass for that the residing and sharp salt of the Sulphur consumes the Glassifying Alcali Mettals also by reason of the every way and unconquered simplicity of their Mercury and unpossible penetration either as being unchanged they delude the work of the fire or wholly flye away yet so as that although they flye away in manner of a smoak yet that fume may be reduced into the nature of its antient Mettal Wherefore Mettals never yielded any Alcali and much less do they reach unto the Innes of the urine But Fire-stones though they have a burnable sulphur which is a devourer of Alcalies yet their mercuries do resist whereby they the lesse come down unto the Innes of the urine The blood also although it hath an admirable salt for healing as well fugitive as fixed yet I have observed it not to be profitable in the Disease of the Stone But moreover the shells of Snailes of Animals of the Earth or of shell-fishes of the water as to that part wherein they carry an acide and Limy-salt they profit indeed persons having the stone that want cleansing but they contain a resistance in respect of their Lixivium to wit as they never reach to the urine The burnt bones of living Creatures retain no fixed salt in them but onely a residing Earth without sauour It is therefore a part of notable Blockishnesse for Ivory and Harts-horn to be calcined for succours against Diseases because they bid the powder thereof being deprived of its vertues to be sold and so also they deceive the Purse and hope of the sick they passe by the occasion of well-doing and make themselves ridiculous But Quiners do freely promise for me For truly their Prooving-pots which they call Capâ—lls ought to consist of ashes deprived of all salt Wherefore those are the best that are made of the ashes of Bones and do far excel those that consist of Ivory and Harts-horn For indeed in my first yeares the Traditions of the Schooles were as so many Oracles in my account But I being perfectly instructed by the fire all the Speculations of the Schooles were blotted out with the fire They had perswaded me amongst other things that the salt of the Sea was hurtfull for those that were diseased with the Stone as well in regard that it afforded matter for the salt of urine as that it hurryed down a muckie phlegme for Duelech The examination of salt by the fire taught me otherwise First of all I preserved a man of sixty yeares old belonging to my Distillations sixteen yeares free from the stone of the Kidneys whereunto otherwise he had been subject through a large use of Sea-salt The which afterwards I confirmed in many For the Schooles when they saw that in the sharp brine of salt being cooled every salt was coagulated after its own manner and that that brine was not made pure without mixture but by an exhalation of the watery part they presently thought that the stone was coagulated from a salt and drying heat and so they supposed that indeed neither were salts corned in the said brine but by the heat of the inbred salt the which therefore is not able to unfold it self into effect as long as there is very much water present with it Therefore when they tasted their own snivel to be salt and that indeed with the savour of a Sea-salt but not with the saltnesse of Urine and they would connex the efficient cause in the matter they supposed that in the same snivel there was a slimy and tough matter joyned to the salt and that the salt also was of it self salt at length they establishd by a perpetual Decree that the stone was generated from a salt phlegme and therefore also being actually hot and by consequence that salt things were hurtfull for those that were troubled with the stone Yea and that phlegme remaining such its qualities and proper passions being changed did passe over into a stone through heat and a slimy dryth just even as Glew and solder their watery part by degrees departing do induce a thick toughnesse of themselves Good God how unsavoury are the Schooles and how unsavoury do they bid us to be as if thou that dost every where bear a care over Mortals and art provident for salts hadst invented by thy study that they might become stony How great is their sluggishnesse that they have never attempted to sprinkle one only pugill or small handfull of salt upon the Urinal of those that have the stone that they might try whether Sea-salt would coagulate the future sands which otherwise would stick fast to the urinals Whether I say there be so great a saltnesse of the urine that it cannot dissolve any more of salt in it For the Urine if it be for the dissolving of salt now that salt shall not be the cause of Corning In the next place they had easily found that Sea-salt being cast into the urine doth hinder its coagulation but not likewise cause it That Sea-salt Isay doth resolve the prepared matter of the Coagulum or Runnet and doth not it self receive a curdling But whatsoever meditates on the destruction of that Runnet shall of necessity also disturbe the coagulation proceeding from thence For as the Schooles do deride our Coagulum's in things so likewise I deride their unsavoury Follies that they think the pebble-stone or flint to grow together or wax dry in the bottom of the water through heat For Fountaines and Rivers do contend for a stony curdling whose bottome hisseth out heat and the Rules of dryth In the next place for the curdling of Liquors our flesh and likewise the blood milk and snivel promiseth For if it were supposed that phlegme be the matter whereof of the stone and that the recocted brine of salt shaved off and with it self dissolved the mucky filths of salted fleshes and at length by boyling up rejected them being thickned into a froth verily they had known that the use of Salt is in no wise to be avoided or forbidden But so great a sluggishnesse of searching hath beset the Schooles that they being content with a little infamous Gain have neglected all things where they might profit their Neighbour if not also themselves For if the stone were dissolved in the urine although being boyled therein or that urine were not for dissolving of salt cast into it they might indeed at the sight of
those shall either be ungrateful to the nature of the stomach and therefore they stir up vomit and stools So that only the incongruity malignity and ingratitude of things taken into the body are the cause why they move vomiting and stool and are forthwith expelled with those things which they threw down into their own Faction Therefore they procure perplexities and troubles But if the things dissolving are acceptable to Nature they are willingly admitted inwards yet the composed body suffers not any thing thereby as well in respect of the thing dissolving as of that which is dissolved For truly both of them are undigestible Therefore that composure remains safe as before it passeth through all the shops of the veins and at length for truly it cannot be changed nor by consequence pass over into the Family of Life is expelled with the sweat by transpiration In which journey whatsoever of filths those famous Secrets do touch at they dissolve them and snatch them away with themselves and so they heal Fevers and most Chronical diseases Whosoever therefore ye be who in healing have cordial charity towards your neighbour learn ye a certain Dissolver which may be homogeneal or simple in kind unchangeable dissolving its Objects into their first liquid matter and thou shalt obtain the innermost Essences of things and shalt be able to look into the natural endowments of these But if ye cannot reach unto that Secret of the Fire learn ye at leastwise to render the Salt of Tartar volatile that by means hereof ye may perfect your dissolutions The which although as being digested in us it forsaketh its dissolved bodies that are safely or unharmedly homogeneal yet it hath borrowed some of their vertues which it conveighs inward as the subduers of most diseases But for the obtainment of these things it is not sufficient to rub over Books but moreover it behooves you to buy coals and vessels and to spend watching nights in order So have I done thus have I spoken let the praise be unto God Because the Universities in their eighth Potion forbid to wit the Cutting of a vein except in the fulness of blood but they admit of it only in this because then the vice of Blood-letting cannot be sufficiently manifest and because in their tenth Position they now implicitely grant a Fever not to be a meer heat but that it is to be cured by heating and corroborating remedies they being all hot things Surely one of the two must of necessity be true To wit either that a Fever is not heat in its root or that they must not heal by contraries any longer Out of the Positions of Lovaine disputed at Lovaine under the most discreet Sir D. Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius on the 26. of November in the year 1641. CHAP. XVI The Essence of Fevers is discovered 1. The life of Mortals is the efficient cause of Diseases 2. Herein is the raging Errour of the life 3. A proof of the foregoing particulars 4. The Authour wherein he disagreeth from the Antients 5. The internal efficient and its matter are proved 6. In what sort the Thingliness or Essence of Fevers may be formed 7. A Proposition 8. That Immortality once consisted from a natural cause 9. The Original of diseasie Idea's 10. What hath deceived the Antients 11. That the Archeus in his own Idea's of perturbations imitates the Imagination 12. The aforesaid Proposition is proved 13. A two-fold fountain of the Beginning of Idea's 14. A necessity of Idea's in a Fever is proved 15. The same thing by a numbring up of parts 16. An examination of the occasional cause HItherto I have disputed against the Schools as if I dared not to teach the Essence of Fevers Therefore since the fruit discovers its tree I am compelled for the sake of the Lovers of Medicine to add a supply whereby the Essence of Fevers being hitherto unknown may be the more illustrated and a manner of distinguishing between Judgement and Judgement and Remedy from Remedy may be granted to the young Beginner First of all I have shewn ably enough that the definition of Fevers have been hitherto unknown and therefore that the Essence and essential causes of those are as yet unknown And seeing the knowledge of things is not granted unto us from a former cause at leastwise it is strongly to be admired at that nothing hath been devised for the Essence of a Fever besides heat while as notwithstanding the History it self of Fevers might have been able sufficiently to have opened the Necessities Agreement and Constancy of Causes and at leastwise to have reduced Mortals from the ridiculous errour of heat unless a sluggishness it self of Mortals had been allured through the tediousness of a diligent search and the easiness of subscribing First of all I speak of the nature of man being corrupted such as it continues since transgression successively For a Disease was as yet an Exile as long as death was absent So indeed that a disease had not yet any hope for it self in possibility But after that death entred into the life every disease stood in a powerful army directed against the life it self so as that a disease intended to establish its nest in the vital Beginning not indeed by fighting as a certain external thing on and against the life But the forreign Guest drew his sword in the very life it self whereby he might cut off the Life his Inne and the Patron of his Essence For such was the corruption of mans immortality that he afterwards drew his own death out of the life it self For neither do I speak in jest far be it when I write of preserving the life of Mortals For indeed every Disease perisheth presently together with the life For neither do matters however hostile they may be feigned to be combate or wax hot any longer after death Wherefore every direction of the internal efficient cause ought to depend on the life it self For that which the Ancients have even hitherto before me called the Duel of nature also the lot of an Elementary complexion with solitary qualities or with the very offensive matter of supposed humours among each other All that I affirm to proceed effectively efficiently and immediately from the principle of life that is from the inordinacy indignation tumult terrour and abhorrency of the vital spirits But the excrementous matter and that which they have thought to be and called the offending or diseasie matter I call that which is produced detained or introduced besides nature from an erring or forreign occasional cause And so I call all such matter only the occasional matter indeed the inciting one and plainly external to a Disease because the presence of which matter as yet remaining the whole Fever doth oft-times cease and utterly perisheth Therefore the internal efficient and immediate formal Being is the very life it self and the immediate matter thereof is drawn and departs from the vital air as to a part of it wherein the
all things soon putrifie under the Equinoctial 141 54 What preserves against putrefaction 152 16 19 What solely promotes it 152 192 Pyrotechny commended 45. 11 What the Pylorus is 222 Of his Government 223 Of his Blas ibid. Of the diseases he stirs up 224 10 Of his shuâ—ting and opening 225 16 A sense of appetite in the Pylorus demonstrated 226 20 His rage and restauration ibid. The use of the Pylorus 228 With observations thereon ibid. The vice of the Pylorus cured 227 22 The four hot seeds usually pacifie the Pylorus 301 21 Q QVartans cured by odorous oyntments 114 17 By an Emplaister 988 1011 Seat of a Quartane 778 Examination of a Quartane 963 Quartane not cured by Physitians 307 57 812 Quick-silver truly prepared cures the Pox. 1094 What the Quellem is And where 94 5689 6 Its greatness 690 14 A Question propounded to all the learned 167,32 No such thing as a Quint-Essence 407 44. 414 79 R. WHat rain is 71 10 73 21 79 12 Of the Rain-bow 87 1. c. Of the radical moisture of the Schools 726 Radical moisture explained 729 Reason condemned 15. c. It is in bruit beasts 20 34 It makes a man unstable 21 40 VVhen reason faileth 715 Reason not â—t he Image of God 268 30 79 The Relâ—llum of Paracelsus 75 36 What it is 66 25 Powerful remedies are not of a foody substance 582 Remedies against Inchantments 605 The Reins do not stir up lust 305 42 How the Reins change the colour of the stone 248 28 Of the Revelation of several persons 1092 The Reins do not cause fatness 308 59 The errours of Physitians as touching rheums 432 15 Rie meal makes durable morter 247 Roses preserve their fragrant putrefaction 414 79 S. SAlt of Tartar volatilized perfects dissolutions 1002 1011 It abstergâ—th 1032 From whence is the first beginning of Salts 694 The vital Being is Salt 193 19 The various properties of Salts 473 22 Salt of venal blood cures the Falling Sickness 195 16 What the chiefest of all is 473 24 How Salt ariseth in Urine 842 The operations of Simple Salts 476 31. 480 The Gas of Salts is nothing but water 109 37 Volatile Salts their vertues 991 Hermaphroditical Salt of Metals 694 Sand not transmutable save only by the artificial hellish fire 52 14 The Sea less than the boyling Sand 690 14 What the true Sea is ibid It hath its motion in it self ibid. Saphire its power in the Plague 765 34 Why Church-men wear Saphirs 766 36 Why Saturns kingdoms are wished for 303 32 The Mercury of Saturn c. 478 40 Its distillation ibid. Against the Contemners of Science 989 The Schools ignorant of the diseases that arise in the sixth digestion 219 The Schools condemned of ignorance and sloath 474 28 c. Of blasphemy 145 78 The errour of the Schools about the first Mover 176 Scorpions produced from Bazil 13 113 Scurvy unknown to the Antients 109 When it first appeared 1092 How seeds issue from the invisible world 935 Seminal beginnings are from an Idea 436 Seeds act as appointed 164 16 No seminal disposition in the soul of man bâ—fore the fall 662 11 The four lesser hot seeds commended 427 75 The proportion of seed in a body is the 8200. th part 106 12 1125 How seeds are made 13 12 The difference betwixt a seed and ferment ibid. Hot seeds are of an easie conception 143 66 Seeds in their Original void of savour and colour 693. 2 Of Sense and Sensation 895 The Sensitive soul not generated by the mind 662 10 It differs from the mind 334 The knitting of the sensitive soul with the mind 251 The seat of the sensitive soul 283 284 285 It remains always in the vital Archeus of the stomack 286 18. 288 32 The sensitive soul is a vital light ibid. 20 Of the power of the sensitive soul when impregnated with the mind 354 13 14 In simples there is a perfect cure of all diseases 467 5 The natural power of some simples 307 54 The quality of the first sin 654 8 Sin hath nâ—â— immediately caused death 655 Â 656 Whence the continuation of original sin ibid. 28 Of the difference between actual and original sin 658 47 Why sleep was sent in before sin 563 Sleep not from a defect 337 1 When sleep is made 339 12 Snow on the mountains melts not 73 15 Soul of man not generated from his parent 662 12 Soul created by God 663 Its retreat in our first parents 664 A Treatise of the soul 342 Of the immortality of the soul 346 The seat of the soul not in the heart 292 13 Some defects of the stomack cured by sweat 1113 The ferment of the stomack to be regarded 453 22 c. Why though still moist yet putrifies not 479 Â 48 Twelve properties of the stomack 560 Some diseases inhabit in the life of the stomack 561 The stomack hath not its ferment in it self 267 11 Sharpness not the vital Ferment of the stostomack 208 131 What it is 210 29 The stomach doth not coct first for it self 216 52 The stomach first sensible of any defect 285 13 14 287 26 The stomach of the liver 20â— 20 The stomach of the gaul ibid Sobriety commended 452 16 Seat of diseases in the sensitive soul confirmed 559 The seat of the sensitive soul 555 Of specifical savours 473 25 Two savours one of the tongue the other of the stomach 474 27 Spleen the maker of seed 305 42 The scituation of the Spleen 540 It is the fountain of Idea's 606 Against black choler in the spleen 964 1056 The defect of the spleen is the cause of the Strangury in old people 1061 A double ferment in the spleen 1055 The spleen inspires a digestive ferment into the stomack 298 The spleen most enriched with Arteries ibid. Of the stomack of the spleen 299 13 Of the external spleen of an Infant 306 49 How the soul thinks intellectualy 23 48 It is substantial 144 70 Its power when freed from corporeal contagion 144 75 What the sensitive soul is 145 82 Soul acts in the body per nutum 780 97 784 The soul generates Entities 785 131 Soul sits in the Duumvirate 301 22 Sharpness is the specifical mean in the stomack 115 34 It dâ—ffers from all other sharpnesses 193 10 Stones and Rocks reducible into their equal weight of Salt 411 65 Whence the Strangury in old people is 855 624 What the Stars shew forth c. 122 21 How they operate 121 14 How they necessitate 123 30 The difference betwixt the Planets and the fixed Stars 125 40 How a wise man rules over them 126 46 The Stone in man not made by the intention of nature 250 5 Of the causes of the stone according to the Antients 705 1 Of their Intentions to cure and by what ibid. Their despair ibid. Why they have erred in the cure 706 12 708 Heat of the reins not the cause of the stone 707 An example