undigestions as they do contain strange or forreign things But they do not therefore materially contain Duelech in them altbough they do occasionally destroy digestion do imprint a rockie middle life whence the enfeebled vegetative faculty of man puts on that wild inclination But that makes nothing for the Author of Tartars For truly it is a far different thing to be made stony occasionally from a stonifying virtue of the middle life of things imprintingly and sealingly introduced into the Archeus and to be made to have the stone from Tartar melted and resolved in waters which at length in the period of dayes may re-assume its former coagulation in the drinker For this latter to be in Nature I deny but the former I affirm to be among ordinary effects But as concerning Strumaes or Kings-Evil-swellings in the Neck and swelling pimples in the face many think that they proceed from mineral waters being drunk also Paracelsus from the use of waters of an evil juyce or disposition But I could wish according to the mans own Doctrine that he may shew by the fire those evil juyces in waters whose property it is to be coagulated onely in our last digestion nor elsewhere than about the neck or throat-bone But I know that he never found in waters such a Tartar Therefore he may be condemned by his own Law wherein he gives a caution that none is to be believed but so far as he is able to demonstrate that thing by the fire I confess indeed that there is in the water a middle life whose property it is to stir up the Archeus and to infect it in the exchanging of good nourishment but not of a forreign Tartar existing in it materially into a Rockie hardness But unto Strumaes a matter is required which by the property of its own Archeus may be bred to stop up our jawes and as it were to strangle us and that without the tast of astriction or an earthly sharpness or harshness for otherwise this tast sticking fast in the bosom of the matter being ripened by the first digestion dieth and which being transchanged into nourishment and retaining the antient virtues of the middle life performs its power more about the throat than elsewhere which power being left to it by an heredicary right in nourishments and from hence in the venal bloud doth convert the nearest nourishment of solid Bodies into a Rockie excrement which goes unto the throat by a strangling faculty of the directer And I narrowly examining that thing in Germany have found Mushromes to be strong in the aforesaid poyson of strangling and that those do often grow out of the Root of a Fountain the Fir-tree and Pine-trees in steep Rocks toward the North where black Agarick an Heir of the same crime is often in the Trunk or Stem I have learned therefore that the whole Leffas or Planty juyce of the Earth is there defiled with a Mushromy disposition Therefore I have believed that hard swellings of the Neck are bred by the use of Herbs and waters which have drunk in this sort of Leffas Furthermore that an Archeal power of the middle life in things doth beget Strumaes but not a reviving ill juycy Tartar of the water the thing it self doth speak For otherwise a Struma should bewray it self no lesse in the bottom of the Belly and Liver nor more slowly than in the throat For River or ill juicy waters do not respect the throat nor should promise so great hardness Not surely should the hard swelling of the neck or throat dissolve by an astrictive and earthy Remedy whereby I have many times seen very great Strumaes or hard swellings of the Neck to have vanished away in one onely month and the strangling suddenly brought on people by a poysonous Mushrome to be cured which Remedy is on this wise Take of Sea-Sponge burnt up into a Coal 3 ounces of the bone of the Fish Sepia burnt long Pepper Ginger Pellitory of Spain Gauls Sal gemmae calcined Egg-shels of each 1 ounce mix them with the stilled water of the aforesaid Spongei and let it be dried up by degrees Take of this Powder half a dram with half an ounce of Sugar the Moon decreasing that it being melted by degrees may be swallowed Or make a Lincture or Lohoch It shall also disperse Botium or the swelling pimpâ—â— in the face Others for want of the Sponge did take the hairy excrescency growing on wild Rose-Trees very like to the outward Rhine of the Chesnut rough and briery or hairy the powder of which alone they did use succesfully Likewise I have used an unction in Strumaes and Schirrus's Of Oyl of Bay not adulterated by Hogs-grease 8 ounces of Olibanum Mastich Gum Arabick Rosin of the Fir-tree of each 3 ounces distil them then distil them again with Pot-Ashes If therefore the hard swelling of the Neck or a hard Scirrhus elsewhere should grow together from a forreign Tartar it should rather wax hard by hot Remedies neither should it be so easily dissolved Therefore the Struma is a defect of the Archeus the transchanger and not through the coagulation of Tartar even as concerning Duelech or the stone in man I have more clearly and abundantly demonstrated For the Archeus transchangeth every masse subjected unto him unless being overcome by a more powerful middle life he shall give place Therefore the Strama is of good venal bloud on which a strangling power of the middle life is felt And Botium or the swelling pimple of the face a remedy being taken perisheth which is not for dissolving a Rockie matter if it were of Tartar brought over thither otherwise it is altogether impossible that Tartar if there should be any should conceive a breathing hole of our life be made lively be co-sitted to the members and be admitted inwards unto the last digestion conceive a ferment of the Arterial bloud but to be discussed or blown away by an unsensible transpiration as also Schirrhus's bred of vital venal bloud the aforesaid Remedy being administred But besides the contention is not about the Asses shadow for truly it is not all one to have denied Tartar to be materially in meats and drinks and likewise to remain throughout the shops of the digestions and therefore at length to be coagulated in miserable men and it is far remote from thence to admit of a thing in us to be transchanged out of a good Cream Chyle or venal bloud into an evil one by virtue of the middle life transplanting the directions of the Archeus For as there is one order of generation so also is there every where another of fore-caution and healing Therefore there is no foundation truth appearance or necessity of tartarizing For which way doth it conduce to devise Tartar to be the stubborn Prince of coagulations which oweth his Birth to a fiction For truly the dispositions coagulations and resolutions of things do depend on their own Seeds Duelech is made no lesse of the purest
length shall that actuall equall and connexed heat under the Sea Rivers pooles Meadows and under the Quellem be For truly it behoveth heat and dryth to be actuall and strong which may there be sufficient for so notable an effect but not potentiall naked remote possible or dreamed qualities What is that heat from what and whence is it rowsed in the more deeper cold what is that heat so short so strong and so interrupted which after a few rigours or extremities of tremblings ceaseth nor which doth shake the Earth a new by trembling For if the cause of so great motion be in heat there shall not at leastwise after the motion be in heat the cause of so sudden rest Lastly what is the dryness connexed to the fire which may forthwith kindle under the Earth and Waters the Waters being all alike dryed up throughout all the Low-Countries a fire the Patron of so great exhalations But go to let us feign by sporting and grant a heat to be actually under the Earth and Water which is made by kindling likewise that great and stubborn heat and its unwonted action which may raise up the exhalations before the dryness of the thing It is verily an irregular effect not as yet hitherto seen among the Artists of the fire Again let us feigne also other absurdities that actuall fire violent in the Water or under watery Bodies may there be bred without fewel and be sustained proceed and long persist without fodder but at leastwise that fire shall not be able to raise up vapours and much lesse inclosed exhalations and to detain them in a narrow place which may not choak that fire out of hand and make the sufficiency forces and successive generation of those exhalations void For truly in the Burrowes of Mineralls if the lights are not forth with from above refreshed with a new blast of Air they are presently extinguished and the diggers also are deprived of breath and life But if that the fire and that the exhalation do subsist untill a sufficient breathing be given Now for that very cause the motive exhalation its off-spring shall first expire from thence or if there be not room for a sufficient breathing the fire verily shall of necessity be stified nor shall there be place for so great a successive exhalation or for the repeated onset of an Earth-quake Let us feign again not indeed that actuall fire or heat is entertained under the Waters in the aforesaid Soils of the Earth but that all the Low-Countries have had something in all places like to Gun-powder which at length by its own ripeness or a hidden conspiracy of the Stats is enflamed at once and every where and for that cause doth afford a sudden exhalation in every place equall But neither truly under so many trifles should all the Low-Countries then jogge any more than once and it had gaped in the more slender and lesse deep and weigh y places and some pieces thereof had leaped forth on high and a Chimny of that exhaling flame would there follow But the Low-Countries and part of Germany had not therefore trembled For once and at once the Earth had some where rose up on the top where it had gaped but it had not often trembled as it were with an aguish rigour For truly the supposed action of inflaming should be made onely that the piercing of Bodies might be hindered Therefore as to the third point To wit that also a sufficient exhalation being granted to be under the Earth nevertheless an Earth-quake is impossible I have begun indeed already to prove by some granted fictions Otherwise after what manner soever an exhalation may be taken and wheresoever that of the Pavements may be supposed the Earth should not thereby tremble but where the least resistances should be it should rise up into a heap or bunch untill it had gaped and the exhalation had made a passage for it self by expiring thorow a huge Gulf. Which things seeing they are not found to have happened the tradition of the Schooles doth in this respect also go to ruine For first of all that it may more clearly appear that the action and manner of the action is divers when as for fear of a piercing of Bodies a thing leaps forth and that nature doth operate after another manner by reason of the supposed lightness of exhalations striving to break forth observe a Handicraft-operation Let there be a Glasse-bottle spatious thick and strong infuse in it four ounces of Aqua fortis being prepared of Salt-peter Alume and Vitriol being dryed apart But cast into that water one ounce of the Powder of Sal Armoniac and straightway let the neck of the Glasse be shut by melting it which is called Hermes Seal As soon as the voluntary action shall begin and the Vessel is filled with a plentifull exhalation yet an invisible one and however it may be feigned to be stronger than Iron yet it straightway dangerously leapeth asunder into broken pieces for fear of piercing but not by reason of the lightness of many exhalations For truly although it bursteth by reason of the multitude and the pressing together of most light and invisible exhalations yet the lightness of the same in this things hath nothing of moment Because if any of these things should happen for lightness sake the Glasse Vessel it self before its bursting would be lifted up into the Air and fly upwards Because it is a thing of lesse labour to lift up a weight of three or four pounds than to break asunder a most strong Vessel Therefore the exhalations which do break the Glasse should much more powerfully lift up the Glasse if the Schooles did not beg the vain help of lightness from exhalations for an Earth-quake If therefore exhalations are not able by their lightness to lift up the Vessel wherein they are shut much lesse so great a quantity of Earth and vast an heap Lastly seeing that every exhalation is of some body and every body if it be to be seperated is divided into Salt Sulphur and Mercury and the Mercuriall part be the watery part of the body therefore it must needes be that every exhalation is of a Salt and Oylie matter And that that is first to be raised up before the watery part Which thing hath not as yet so happened in our Glasses by the an equall action of heat If therefore an exhalation be Salt it is easily soaked or imbibed into the Earth which may be seen wholly in all waters and exhalations of what Salts soever which in acting upon the Earth are coagulated in it and loose all activity Therefore if they should be stirred up in the earth they had failed before they were or in the making had ceased to be But if the exhalation be oily surely that being laid deposited or laid up into the Earth it retakes the former shape of Oyl and so growes together Which thing seeing it easily comes to passe it cannot be thought
or glassen Bell doth shew that a great part of the Sulphur being untouched by the flame ascended upwards the which is again seperated safe from that Liquor by rectifying For Sulphurs or fats although they are many times distilled by any degree of the fire yet they do alwayes remain fats and even do retain their nature as long as they do enjoy or obtain the seed of their composed Body The which when as the flame or artificiall death hath touched they straightway flie over into Gas but not into water For that every Gas doth as yet retain some condition of its composed body For smoaks of the flame do differ by their generall and speciall kindes which surely should not be if they should immediately depart into their first Element The fire indeed destroyeth simply but it generates nothing for why seeing it wants the power of a seed and those things which it cannot destroy those it at leastwise seperateth or leaveth untouched and in this respect they are called fixt bodies But the fire doth not prevail in that as to exchange that which is in it self materially water into Air for otherwise it should have the seed of the Air. It is also sufficiently manifest before that water is made air or air water by no help of art or nature Therefore Wood since it is wholly of water its ashes and likewise Glasse shall be of water But that the Gas of Salts is nothing but water the following Handicraft-operation proveth Take equall parts of Salt-peter Vitriol and Alume all being dried and conjoyned together distill a Water which is nothing else than a meer volatile Salt Of this take four ounces and joyn an ounce of Sal armoniac in a strong Glassen Alembick confirmed by a Cement of Wax Rosin and Powder of Glasse being powred most hotly on it straightway even in the cold a Gas is stirred up and the Vessel how strong soever it be bursteth with a noyse But if indeed thou shalt leave a chap or chink in the juncture of the receiving Vessel and after voluntary boylings up thou shalt distill the residue thou shalt finde a water somewhat sharp the which by a repeated distillation and an additament of Chalke is turned into Rain-water Therefore one part of the Salts yielded into water but the other part into Gas But the Salts that fled away by a Gas are of the same kinde of nature with those that were reduced into water therefore the Gas of Salts is materially nothing but water But the Gas of fruits I have likewise already shewen to be nothing but water as arising immediately out of water So the Raisin of the Sun being distilled is wholly reduced by art into an Elementary water which yet being new and once wounded or bruised much new Wine and Gas is allured or fetched out If therefore the whole Grape before a ferment be turned into a simple water but the ferment being brought a Gas is stirred up this Gas also must needes be water Seeing the disposition of the ferment cannot form air of that which is materially nothing but water Therefore the unrestrainable Gas of the Vessel breaks forth abroad into the air untill it being sufficiently confirmed and by the cold of the place spoiled also of the properties of its composed body passeth over into its first matter and in the air the seperater of the waters it recovereth its antient and full disposition of the Element of water But exhalations which in the account of the Schooles are the daily matter of Windes Mists Comets Mineralls Rockie Stones saltness of the Sea Earth-quakes and of all Meteors seeing they have no pen-case or receptacle in nature nor matter sufficient for so great daily things and those for so great an heap they are wondrous dreams and unskilfully proportioned to their effects And therefore I passe by these unsavourinesses or follies of the Schooles by pittying of them At leastwise it followes that if Rockie Stones if all Mineralls do proceed from exhalations and being now fixed do resist the Agent which should bring them again into an exhalation there shall be in the remaining Earth matter for new exhalations producing effects of so great moment Especially because scarce any thing exhaleth out of the saltness of the Sea and such is the aptness or disposition of heat that it scarce stirs up exhalations unless it hath first lifted up all the water by vapours What matter therefore shall be sufficient even for daily Windes alone Truly it is altogether impossible for the Schooles to have known the nature and likewise the differences causes and properties of Bodies for as many as have set upon Philosophy without the art of the fire have been hitherto deluded with Paganish Institutions At length I have written touching long life that the arteriall Spirit of our life is of the nature of a Gas Which thing is seen in the trembling of the heart swooning and fainting For how much doth it die to a lively colour to a vitall light and to a swollen or full habit of flesh and the countenance it self being the more wrinckled or withered how quickly doth it decay straightway after the aforesaid passions For the Spirit which before did as it were unite all things by a pleasing redness doth straightway fly away and being subdued by a forreign Air is changed For truly seeing the Archeus is in it self a Gas of the nature of a Balsamick Salt if it shall finde the air of another Salt to be against it or in its way even as Sal armoniac when it meetes with the Spirit of Saltpeter it is subject too easily and forthwith to be blown away or dispersed through the pores as having forgotten to perform its duties and office of the Family For neither is it gathered into drops because it is prepared of an arteriall bloudiness If any thing of sweat at the time of faintings and death doth exhale that is the melting of the venall bloud but not of the arteriall bloud Therefore the vitall Gas because it is a light and a Balsam preserving from corruption from the first delineation of generation it began to be made suitable to the light of the Sun But after the aforesaid failings of the Spirit the in-bred Spirits of the other members as it were smoaking are again kindled by the Sun-like light of the heart even as the smoak of a Candle put out touching at the flame of another Candle doth carry this flame to the extinguished Candle by a Mean Seeing that the Spirit of our life since it is a Gas is most mightily and swiftly affected by any other Gas to wit by reason of their immediate co-touchings For neither therefore doth any thing thereupon operate more swiftly on us than a Gas as appeares in the Dogvault or that of the Sicilians in the Plague in burning Coals that are smothered and in persumes for many and oftentimes men are straightway killed in the Burrowes of Mineralls yea in Cellars where strong Ale or
water nor yet are fixed do necessarily belch forth a wild spirit or breath Suppose thou that of 62 pounds of Oaken coal one pound of ashes is composed Therefore the 61 remaining pounds are the wild spirit which also being fired cannot depart the Vessel being shut I call this Spirit unknown hitherto by the new name of Gas which can neither be constrained by Vessels nor reduced into a visible body unless the seed being first extinguished But Bodies do contain this Spirit and do sometimes wholly depart into such a Spirit not indeed because it is actually in those very bodies for truly it could not be detained yea the whole composed body should flie away at once but it is a Spirit grown together coagulated after the manner of a body and is stirred up by an attained ferment as in Wine the juyce of unripe Grapes bread hydromel or water and Honey c. Or by a strange addition as I shall sometime shew concerning Sal Armoniack or at length by some alterative disposition such as is roasting in respect of an Apple For the Grape is kept and dried being unhurt but its skin being once burst and wounded it straightway conceiveth a ferment of boyling up and from hence the beginning of a transmutation Therefore the Wines of Grapes Apples berries Honey and likewise flowers and leaves being pounced a ferment being snatched to them they begin to boyl and be hot whence ariseth a Gas but from Raysins bruised and used for want of a ferment a Gas is not presently granted The Gas of Wines if it be constrained by much force within Hogs-heads makes Wines â—urious mute and hurtfull Wherefore also the Graâ—e being abundantly eaten hath many times brought forth a diseasie Gas For truly the spirit of the ferment is much disturbed and seeing it is disobedient to our digestion it associates it selfe to the vitall spirit by force yea if any thing be prepared to be expelled in manner of a Sweat that thing through the stubborn sharpness or soureness of the ferment waxeth clotty and brings forth notable troubles torments or wringings of the bowels Fluxes and the Bloudy-flux I being sometimes in my young beginnings deluded by the authority of ignorant writers have believed the Gas of Grapes to be the spirit of Wine in new Wine But vain tryalls have taught me that the Gas of Grapes and new Wine are in the way to Wine but not the spirit of Wine For the juyce of Grapes differs from Wine no otherwise than the pulse of water and meal do from Ale or Beer For a fermentall disposition coming between both disposeth the fore-going matter into the transmutation of it self that thereby another Being may be made For truly I will at sometims teach that every formall transmutation doth presuppose a corruptive ferment Other more refined Writers have thought that Gas is a winde or air inclosed in things which had flowen unto that generation for an Elementary co-mixture And so Paracelsus supposed that the air doth invisibly lurk under the three other Elements in every body but in time onely that the Air is visible but his own unconstancy reproveth himself because seeing that he sheweth in many places else-where that bodies are mixed of the three first things but that the Elements are not Bodies but the meer wombs ' of things But he observed not a two-fold Sulphur in Tin and therefore is it lighter than other Mettalls whereof one onely is co-agulable by reason of the strange or forreign property of its Salt whereby Jupiter or Tin maketh every Mettall frangible or capable of breaking and brickle it being but a little defiled with its odour onely but that the other Sulphur is Oily For Gun-powder doth the most neerly express the History of Gas For it consisteth of Salt-peter which they rashly think to be the Nitre of the Antients and the which is at this day plentifully brought to us being dried up from the inundation of Nilus of Sulphur and a Coal because they being joyned if they are enflamed there is not a Vessel in nature which being close shut up doth not burst by reason of the Gas For if the Coal be kindled the Vessel being shut nothing of it perisheth but Sulphur if the Glasse being shut it be sublimed wholly ascends from the bottom without the changing of its Species or kinde Salt-peter also being melted in a shut Vessel as to one part of it gives a sharp Liquor that is watery but as to the other part it is changed into a fixed Alcali Therefore fire sends forth an Air or rather a Gas out of all of them singly which else if the air were within it would â—end forth from the three things being connexed Therefore those things being applied together do mutually convert themselves into Gas through destruction But there is that un-sufferance of Sulphur and Salt-peter not indeed by the wedlock of cold with hot as of powerfull qualities as is believed but by reason of the un-cosufferable â—lowing of boyling Oil and Wine no lesse than of water or of Copper and Tin being melted with Wine For in so great heat when they co-touch each other throughout their least parts they are either turned into a Gas or do leap asunder For so Lead being roasted with Mercury and Sulphur departeth into a sudden flame a small lee or dreg being left almost of no weight yet enlarged to the extension of the Lead VVherefore if the Gas were air all the Gun-powder should be air and the Lead it self should be wholly air But it is not possible for the fire to produce out of the same Elementary fruit sometimes air sometimes water with an ultimate reducement unlesse the fire loose also its uniformity of working that was planted in it by the Creator In the next place it is already above sufficiently manifested that air and water can never be brought over into each other Therefore if Gun-powder or Salt-peter may observably be reduced into an Elementary water by fire or any other mean whatsoever a transmutation thereof into air is not possible to be But some thousands of pounds of Gun-powder being at some time enflamed at once have not yielded any thing but an inflamed Gas which hath growen together in the Clouds and at length returning into water Furthermore a Coal is reduced in some Fountains into a Rockie stone Likewise I have known the meanes whereby the whole of Salt-peter is turned into an Earth and the whole of Sulphur being once dissolved may be fixed into an Earthly Powder What if therefore these three Earths should contain three or four Elements at leastwise the Earth should occupie the greatest part nor that reducible into its former Gas neither is it consonant to Reason that a Body which wholly flies away into an aiery Gas should be converted into Air or into Earth as man listeth Next seeing the three aforesaid Powders are at length made water under the Artificer which afterwards cannot any more through humane cunning return into
of judgement doth spring forth from the understanding through the Grace of God with a free choyce of the assenting will I will not compel any one Every one may uncompelledly choose as much as the free gifts received of the truth shall shew themselves in the understanding I likewise being also greedy of the truth of Nature although a dull searcher began to meditate if there be any Tartar in us with a property of subsisting to wit all or every digestion being neglected and finished in us by the retentive faculty of re-assuming a Cream against our will that shall be either miraculous or supernatural or plainly natural or deceitful or divelish which although it be not above Nature yet by reason of its unaccustomed order in Nature it is sequestred into a peculiar rank But whatsoever doth subsist onely by art seeing essential Forms are secluded from the power of Artificers the artificial Being thence arising doth not fall under a Medicinal Consideration Therefore from a sufficient numbring up of parts the aforesaid division of Tartar is commended Again although Tartar were diseasie and thus far besides the intent of humane Nature yet it should not be in its own entity besides nature seeing every material Being is enclosed in the bosom of Nature therefore whether Tartar be supernatural or meerly natural at least it should be a Creature therefore Tartar should be created from the beginning seeing none is read to be created forthwith after sin neither any matter to be formally transchanged by the curse Therefore the Creator had made the punishment before the fault and death in the matter which resisteth the truth and Text. After what manner soever therefore Tartar be taken it was not created by God And therefore it is not any wise created Indeed the seeds of Thistles and Thorns were promised to the first Husbandmen not that thenceforth through the curse a new Creature in all nourishments should be transchanged or immingled into or with Tartar which it had not been before the fall for the curse had gone before the sin and the punishment had been brought in before the guilt For Paracelsus ought to have known that there are in nature two Sisters of the same womb or Mother among tangible things To wit resolving and coagulating which do mutually receive each other by course For a Liquor waxeth solid and solid things do likewise melt Because that successive change is a Law written in the Stamp of Bodies For truly a solid Body is never transchanged into another Body but it is first reduced by resolving into its first matter which is the Liquor to wit which it had before it was coagulated neither must we believe that there is any Body at this day whose matter was not created from the beginning neither was there after the first six dayes any void thing in the Body which by a new Creation of Tartar following after sin was supplyed And much lesse that God had created Tartar in us for Thistles and Thorns which our first Parent and capital transgressor had not much more principally originally and capitally felt and by consequence likewise all Diseases which Paracelsus deviseth to arise from thence Seeing God is not an excepter of persons but a just and severe revenger for every one their deserts Lastly very many things do hinder me to believe that any Tartar doth traiterously enter into us and that although it be rightly subdued and transchanged by our digestion yet that being afterwards mindful of its malignity it severeth it self from the company of the good nourishment doth retain its antient inclination of hurting and its antient Hostilities of coagulating For indeed although Adam had not sinned yet Wine had not therefore been without Tartar Milk without Cheese Rivers without Stones and Meats without excrements Surely the emunctories of dungs were before sin neither appointed that onely after the fall they should serve for their uses Surely the Tartar of Wine it self hath deluded this first inventer of Tartars being ignorant that that Tartar had proceeded from its Creation as a profitable and good Creature having proper ends according to the intention of God By how much the more that the inventer of the Tartar of a Disease doth confess Tartar to be more excellent than Wine but excrements are not more excellent than the Bodies whose superfluities they are At leastwise it is not reasonable that a Being should possess a great virtue which it had drowned in Nature from the curse of sin But if a Body in as much as it is coagulable is Tartar now the whole Universe shall not be free from this guilt but it is the Son of cursing and not of Creation In the next place Tartar of Wine is resolved by the boyling of water and the water being evaporated it again groweth together into a Powder which is now called a Cream But it being once subdued by our digestion it is no more afterwards coagulated into a Powder For even as there is need of boyling water to dissolve so there is need of the digestive faculty to transchange Therefore he should be a Physitian of wicked Counsel who should give Tartar to drink if it might again be coagulated within and should traiterously adhere to the Vessels For if after absolute digestion any thing should retain its antient force of coagulating and thereby should bring forth some Centuries of Diseases that thing by all prerogative should be the very Tartar of Wine it self under whose Banner the others have given their names in the power of Paracelsus But besides the Tartar of Wine is not any more coagulated into its antient state but it layes aside all hope of hardening so that it cleanseth the stomach of muckinesses or filths therefore much lesse could the Tartars of meats do that Furthermore if any Tartar having entred out of the Earth into meats should again retake the drawn Counsels of a Cream in us surely that Tartar first undergoing in Herbs and lesser Cattel and so in meats themselves the same Lawes of transmutation it being banished and separated from the same had either been like Tartar or otherwise it had lost in them the wild nature of coagulating But seeing it shall not exercise in meats that treason of hardening neither shall it retain or hath it the properties of Tartar after what sort I pray shall it resume that in us which at first when it was made an Herb or afterwards when the flesh of Cattel For how shall it forget its treachery in its first transmutation into an Herb and afterwards in its second into a Beast and should at first repeat it in us by its third transmutation with Pot-herbs with Milk But if it had been formally transchanged and had lost the essence and property of Tartar while it did put on the vital Spirit and substance of a Cabbage Grasse Milk and flesh and was truly made vital in these the bruitishness of Tartar being laid aside how I say and whence shall it finde
in us its antient and unchanged principles of coagulating a diseasie Tartar or if it shall not lay aside the properties of Tartar while it was made an Herb while Chyle Cream Bloud and at length Milk why doth it not shew it self an open enemy For neither doth Phylosophy permit that it should be both a Tartar and also a Cabbage or at length living arterial bloud and Tartar also Wherefore if Tartar hath lost its own essence and departed into a strange one it could not have retained its own and much lesse rather have passed in us from a privation unto a habit than in Herbs than in Bruits At length if there be real Tartar in things surely that should be persevering through all the transmutations of a Body nor suffering any thing by the powers of sublunary things which should suffer nothing at all by so many transmutations succeeding each other unless being taken by us alone But this is absurd to endow any thing with the excrements of perpetuity which should not be familiar to their pure Being yea either a field that is dunged Rape roots springing a fourth time therein should bring forth fruits laden with no Tartar at all or it is absurd that at the third or fourth turn Tartar should even manifest it self before it be hidden Moreover if every growing or increasing thing should have a proper and unseparable Tartar in it that in us onely but not in the Milk and Bloud of bruit Beasts Tartar by an appointment should be made it should needs be that Tartar began from the beginning of the Creation and not from the reproof of sin But if Tartar should not be in other Creatures but onely in us now its original should be supernatural and no Disease should be natural but every Disease should arise from a Miracle and our digestion should be viler and life shorter than that of the vilest little Beast whereof to wit there is a digestion unto a true transmutation and in respect of them all Tartars of meats do remain miraculously changed in its first matter This I say Phylosophy destroyes which teacheth that a transmutation is never made without the death and decease of the former Being and the destruction of the terme from whence to wit least one onely thing should consist to be in two terms or bounds at once For that the juyce of an Herb may be made venal bloud the essence of the arterial bloud of the Herb must needs first perish with the properties of its own Archeus and for this cause also all Tartar to perish in every transmutation of things VVhat if Stones in Cherries Peachies Medlers Peares c. be the created Tartars of those fruits surely they ought rather to have been brought on the Stage of Tartars and into the causes of diseases than the very Tartar of Wine it self which is resolved in boyling water Also the Medicinal Schools should be wicked and pernicious who do give the shells of those Fruits to drink to their sick folks in manner of a Powder in as much as whatsoever should melt through our digestions should contain Tartar and therefore should necessarily increase our Stones And moreover Tartar being granted for the cause of Diseases of necessity a Kernel had before sin been in a Cherry without a shell and so every created thing after sin had been forthwith changed even unto the Sciences and Idea's of Seeds and had put off its former disposition and figure and should presently increase from the curse and not from the virtue of the blessing Increase and multiply Therefore are the shels of those Fruits vainly adorned with so great a grace are sealed by providence and do keep every where a specifical sameliness if they are the off-springs and Reliques of excrements or Tartars if they are not the appointed works of Seeds but the accidental structures of Tartar So also thorow the stalk of a Cherry surely a small thred a Liquor should passe the future Tartar of so great a hardening which had never grown together in the stalk or body of its Cherry but onely about the Kernel And moreover the appointment of Nature is rather and more prime about the skin and shell of the Cherry than about its Winy juyce And so nature should intend an excrement before the thing it self But in us onely by the co-touching of the teeth Tartar should straightway wax hard Also Tartar should exceed in a notable knowledge because it being taken doth not yet wander thorow the Plant nor also while it being chewed by a bruit Beast is it wasted or grinded but being in the possession of man alone should be formed into Tartar but elsewhere it will not or knowes not how to be coagulated Truly if in Fruits Tartar doth not follow its own appointments but first onely in man I can scarce believe that this Command was enjoyned it by God while it enters into us in manner of meat But rather if any thing of meats doth degenerate within from the banishment of that which was accustomed in nature let that be our vice not the vice of things great with child of Tartar But if Tartar should lay hid in things the errour should be in the Archeus from the ignorance of the Lawes of his own nature Let that be an absurdity to wit to deny that through digestion the thing digested and transchanged from the former visage and inclination of its seed can be changed into the nature of the digester For indeed by one onely and homogeneal juyce four hundred herbs and as many diverse trees are sumptuously nourished not indeed that from that similar juice that is separated for wood which containeth more of Rozin and a stronger cream and as many separations of the same juice of the earth are made as there are diversities in the aforesaid plants far be it That is unworthy of the Archeus who hath fully known the office of his own life and hath obtained means for the perfecting those things which are to be done by himself in the matter subjected to him For not any thing is separated from the seeds for a root stalk leaf flesh bone or brain The diversity of members is not drawn from the truth of a simple liquor for the Archeus wanteth not a little and unperceivable diversity thereof in seeds on whose power every interchangeable course doth depend and of which fore-existing disposition indeed the Archeus himself is the principal and one onely workman to wit from the same Vulcan the diversities of things do issue forth no lesse than the properties of diversities for else the Archeus should not be a transchanger but onely a ripener and cook For was not wood a juice in its beginning and so a meer herby liquor waxed hard by a seminal virtue but not by a fore-existing hardnesse in the matter That also of Paracelsus is absurd that although material dispositions the causes of heterogeneal members do not actually exist at least wise there is a spiritual humane Idea in
of the Stomack But as a defect of Blood is restored by the more meer or pure meats and drinks So the defect of the Latex is recompenced by watery things it being that which experience teacheth Thirst therefore proceedeth from the governour of the Latex and not from the Bowel of sanguification for there is as much necessity of the Latex as there hath been hitherto dulness in the passing it by Some Authors do commend live Toads being fast bound to both Kidneys to lose the Dropsie by the Urine At leastwise I have seen a Country-man that had a Dropsie cured by an Adder tyed about his Belly and Reins For an Idea of fear is brought on the Reins whereby they loose their indignation Indeed by the same title thirst doth stir up an Idea of sorrow or of a denyed appetite whence the Kidney forgets its wroth From what therefore hath been said before the ignorance of Causes in the Dropsie is sufficient manifest and next with what great obscurity they have laboured about the distemperature of the Liver and emptying of waters how vainly they have thought of provokers of Urine of Vesicatories and of solutive Medicines and it is to be observed in this place that purgative Cholagogals or movers of Cholar have been wickedly given to drink to Dropsical People because they are such things which trans-change the Flesh and venal Blood into a stinking and yellow ballast without the help of a Dropsie But with the destruction of the a Hydropsical person But a hydragogal or mover of water differs from a Cholagogal because that being drunk down the Belly asswageth neither doth it expurge stinking things or excrements unless the force of a Cholagogal be adjoyned to an Hydragogall Therefore Mercury precipitated according to the prescription of Paracelsus cures every Dropsie not as it purgeth but forasmuch as it material passing through the Bowels dissolues the out-hunted Blood But if it together with that do provoke Vomit or Stool that is to the Dropsie by accident Take notice therefore of this that white Briony or white Vine being scraped or filed and laid on a bruise wherein the blood looketh black under the skin doth in few hours resolve that blood into water the which it likewise fetcheth through the skin Wherefore take notice that there is the profitable virtue of an Hydragogal or mover of water in Briony if thou shalt take away the solutive poyson from the same But surely I have observed if Antimony be turned into a liquor and afterwards into a pouder which purgeth only by sweat a remedy is procured which modestly takes away every Dropsie whithout fear of a relaps for truly it removeth as well the occasional Cause as the distemper of the raging Archeus it self For such remedies as are carried through the intestines their natural endowment remaining and being secure and the which are therefore apt to resolve the occasional Cause do free Nature of her impediments whence the Archeus of the Kidney percieving the proper madness of his fore-past fury doth open the veines suck to him and strain the water through according to his due and wonted manner and recompenceth with diligence the stubbornness of his fore-past fury by an excentrical and opposite motion of the Latex grieving that through disorder he intended his own destruction whence it is plain to be seen that the government of the Kidney over the Abdomen and Veins hath hitherto been unknown The Dropsie therefore is a Disease occasionally arisen from a bloody depraved matter as it were from a fermental Beginning at whose incitements the Archeus of the Reins formeth an Idea of indignation through the power whereof he shuts up the Urine-pipes and Veins corrupts and diverts the abounding Latex and transmits this Latex into the compass of the Abdomen or nether part of the Belly in the mean time he so straitens the pores of these Membranes of the Abdomen that they can let nothing of all thorow them even until Death But the Tympany doth very much differ from the Dropsie For there is unto it a different occasional Cause a different manner of making in the next place a different matter and also a different efficient Cause Therefore a different Disposition and a different Product For Water is not generated but Wind And then neither is a Tympany made through the Arbitration of the Kidney but onely by a poysonsom ferment of the spermatick or seedie nourishment sticking and defiled in the crooked bought of the Intestine sitting as President Neither also hath Anatomy hitherto viewed the veines to be swollen with wind neither ought the Liver to suffer punishment by reason of the wringings of the Bowels although aswel the Dropsie as Tympany may follow wringings or gripings Also if the Flatus's of the Intestine should be made by the Liver a Remedy is to be applied to the Liver but not a carminative Medicine to the Intestine or the Schooles make themselves guilty through a different manner of curing For if they were mindfull of their own Theorem that of the same faculty there is a found and infirm Action they had known that Belching and Flatus's are generated by the Bowels and Stomack And so that the crooked bought of the Intestine is no lesse apt for generating of Flatus's than the concave or hollowness thereof A Tympany molesteth from Liquors which were to be assimilated but are become degenerate For a Windinesse or Flatus is made in the Intestine from a certain indisposition of the Archeus of the place who then doth forthwith change meats which are nothing flatulent into a flatus Seeing therefore in the Tympany it is in the out-side or in the crooked bought of the Intestine the same flatulent indisposition is to be considered to be with-out-side as is within in the Intestine To wit it is made from a similar nourishment degenerating whereby a dungy ferment happening the very Archeus of the place being wroth and ill affected doth turn not indeed the aforesaid occasional Cause but the proper nourishment of the Membranes into Flatus's But for this purpose a part of the dungy-ferment doth passe from the inward cavity unto the outward bought of the Intestine And therefore that is not the unsavoury or four flatus of Belchings as neither doth it smel of dung because it is not of a dungy-matter but of a degenerated and cadaverous or mortified nourishment A certain man by the perswasion of Physitians sustaining an Incision on the side of his Navel who was judged to have the Dropsie and that they might draw out the water I being a Young Man and looking on the Chyrurgions Lancet or Fleam being drawn out his Abdomen presently pitched and he by and by died But a Flatus which hugely stank uttered it self and his dead Carcass smelt It is manifest therefore that the occasional matter and next the true matter and inward effecter with all the knowledge which credits a Physitian have remained unknown The vanity also of Remedies appeareth and
the mean time they do now and then assoon as may be reach the Air but sometimes they run head-long down by long journeys and Pipes of Earth and rockie Stones before they yeild themselves to the Light yet there was the same reason necessity and end of their Institution on both sides to wit the will of him who created all things for our uses But it remains to crave leave that Aristotelical spirits may indulge my liberty if I shall judge it a dream impossible to Nature that Fountaines should be bred from a co-thickning of Air For indeed that also is chiefly true That Air was never nor is it to be in any Age Water even as neither was Water to assume the Form of Air. For they are first-born Elements and the constant Wombs of things stable from the Creation of the World and so remaining unto the end thereof But whatsoever hath through the ranks of Generations subscribed it self unto successive change whether it may seem to be Earthly Stony or Liquory it derives all that from the mass of three Principles dedicated unto the Tragedy of Generation but not from the first Elements which rejoyce not but in a stable continuance and the which do again lay up their deserved Youngs into their antient â—â—ceptacles until the seeds are ripe for the Generation of a new Off-spring which Seeds the same Principles of Bodies being in the mean time thorowly changed by Digestions do again cloath and re-assume For from an invisible and incorporeal seed entertained in the Wombs of the Elements and putting on the Principles of Bodies all Generation in the Universe which is called voluntary is made Others have called that thing a Flux from a Non-being unto a Being which things that they may become more perspicuous it is to be noted that unto the production of every thing two onely Sexes if not one promiscuous one at least have concurred Therefore also by the same Law of a worldly harmony there are Originally two onely Elements in the Universe to wit the Air and the Water which are sufficiently insinuated from the sacred Text by the Spirit swimming upon the Abysse or great Deep of Waters in the first beginnings of the World The Earth therefore and the Fire or Heaven if they are Elements they are called secondary ones proceeding from the former For whatsoever of Earths rocky Stones Gemms Sands c. doth exist or flowes forth into a stinking Vapour or is at first changed into Ashes a Calx or Lime or at leastwise through the Society of some Addittament into a Salt the off-spring of Waters presently afterwards they all the volatile Summe exceeding or over comming the fixed Summe are made aiery and vapoury Efluxes rushing-into water with a hastened Violence And so that whatsoever is earthy hard solid and compacted seeing all that is reducible unto a more simple thin pure and former remaining substance pardon the Novelty most resplendent Prince it must needs be that it hath no Efficacy of an Element at all but that they are more latter things than Air and Water In like manner we say of the Heaven that the Heavens shall be changed shall wax Old and Perish and so that the Heaven and the Earth shall at length Perish the like message of which Destruction thou shalt not find concerning the Air and Water In the next place the Water or Air could never in any Age be reduced into any other former Body by Art or Nature This therefore is the Face this the Ordination this in the next place is the Office Combination Fate and End of the Elements to wit that the unchanged Essence of two most simple Bodies and their unmixed substance may afford a vital Womb or Prop unto Seeds and Fruits until at length the number of things to be generated being accomplished the heap of Principles together with the Seeds do constitute strange Families and Colonies their Bride-bed being separated in a more blessed Seat For the very many Dreams wherewith the World hath suffered it self to be hitherto circumvented the handicraft Operation of the Fire doth deride with loud Laughter Who indeed will deny but that the Water is easily changed into a Vapour But that Vapour or Exhaltation is so far from being Air that the Powder of Marble or a Flint may sooner be Water as we have shewn For a Vapour is in very deed materially and formally nothing else but a heap of the Atoms of Water lifted up on high The which our School shews forth more clearly than the Light at Noon The Air therefore whether it be received in hot or cold Glasses and pressed together therein shall never afford Water but according to how much of a Vapour that is of an extenuated Water it shall contain within it But the Water is seperated into very small conspicuous Drops against the Sun thorow the Glass at the Beginning of Distillation as long as the sides are cold to wit while through the vigour of Heat it flies away extenuated into a Vapour And that thing indeed happens no otherwise than by a proper Magnal which in things mixt and so also in the Water it self is the Skie thinner than the Air and dis-joynable from the same and sustaining its compression and enlargment contending for a middle thing or Nature between a Body and not a Body receiving the Impressions of the External Stars of its native Soyle being altogether intimate in all things by reason of which alone and not of Air we draw our Breath a proper Magnal I say and a spiritual Being in the Water doth indeed lift the Water on high it being lightned by Heat procuring a divulsion or renting asunder of the Magnal which same rent Magnal detains a quantity of Water proportioned unto it self which is rent upwards as well in the Glasses as in the Clouds and doth preserve them from falling until through the compression perhaps of succeeding Atoms as it comes to pass in distillation the former do grow together into drops and do enclose the former Magnal or vital Being within themselves Or the same Magnal of the Water being rarified through Heat and being straightway after condensed through help of External Cold doth constrain and restrain those same its own Atoms of small Drops within the Limits of its command I return unto thee Stagyrian Aristotle If Air be co-thickned into Water seeing thou teachest Air more to excell in Moisture than Water I pray thee why shall Cold which is natural to the Air change the Nature of the Air into a matter which is too moist of its own Nature In the next place now Cold and no longer Heat shall possess the vital Principle of Generation Wherefore although a Vapour be Air generated of Water formally transchanged and of the same again alike water doth grow together Now thou differest from thy own self who admittest of so frequent and easie a return from a privation unto a habit At length take thou also this handicraft Experiment Air may
are also nourished by it Yet I have discerned that the nourishable Moisture as long as it is homogeneally admitted for Increase within the Root of the Mixture is wholly the same with that which is radical But if afterwards by accident it be no longer admitted into an unseperable Fellowship because growth ceaseth Yet that this doth not in the least change vitiate alter or alienate the Nature of the former Moisture Because that abundance of it is in every part eminently cast forth by Dreams it being of the same kind with the original and radical Moisture which two names are distinguished only in this that of the original Moisture the Young is formed But the radical Moisture is that same and moreover that from whence we grow and are nourished For as long as we are increased there is made not only a solid Application of the moisture but a solid Application and Assimilation of that which is applied for that thing happens daylie under every Nourishment but moreover there is made a radical Union of the thing nourished with the Nourishment which is presently afterwards sealed by the Spirit of Life and vitally illustrated by the Form Therefore the sealing contains a Character which fixeth and confirmeth that Moisture into the homogeneal Substance of the similar Part to wit from whose Archeus the Nourishment it self is converted and assimilated and so that by transchanging it departs into the Family of the Part containing which before was only contained under which Flux a true Information of the Soul happens From its lot only there and happy success the radical Moisture is distinguished from the Dew of the secondary Humours but not in Nature To wit because the Dew being as it were a new and young Humour is consumed as to a great part of it in time of growth and as to its whole after-growth neither is it ever united into the Root of Mixture that it may be made a partaker of the aforesaid sealing and attain the Dignity of a part containing For example Calx-vive or Quick-lime when it is quenched or appeased becomes a Pluss which most intimately couples the Water to the Calx But if more Water than is meet be poured on it the same Water abounding is straightway rejected and swims a top In the mean time notwithstanding in fulness of time that Calx is dried and stonifies even under the middle of the Waters But that hardness being once attained although it be afterwards most exactly beaten into the most fine Powder or Dust yet for the future it keeps the Shape of a Powder and despiseth the intimate Wedlocks of Water it assumeth not the Disposition of the former Pulss neither is the Water thenceforth radically co-mixed with it Notwithstanding the Moisture of the Water it self is individually the same whether it be secluded from the co-mixture of the Calx or be admitted unto it And that because it is contingently contingent to the Water by accident not so much through Defect of the Water as of the Calx or root But yet the aforesaid Pulss of the Lime is plainly more slowly dryed than the Powder of the Moisture is from without on every side watered with the Waters I therefore considered that however the Schools do resound many things concerning the radical Moisture yet that the nourishable Humour doth not any way differ from the radical Humour it self as long as it pulsifies and is solidated within the Root of Mixture being conjoyned unto the first constituting parts by a radical Union Because that both the Liquors are the same in Matter Virtue Substance Purity formal Identity and Participation of Life the which when our solid Parts do no longer pulsifie and admit of they at least-wise for the future hinder an intimate Connexion of the Root so much as they can and fore-slow the dryness of the solid containing Parts by reason of their continual bedewing For when that Pulss of the sound Parts hath obtained a just Solidity to wit because the power of Increasing defluxing from the Brain is exhausted then the Moisture is only made nourishable which before was made radical For however Old Age cause dryness yet Death is not from a more dry Habit or State of Body For truly we may rather conjecture Dryness to be from a Defect of the vital Powers than the aforesaid Defect from dryness For the Moisture of the solid Parts however in an Atrophia and Diseases of long continuance it be equally and throughout the whole entire Body consumed yet it is easily restored by a due Nourishment and the more bountifully by taking the milkie Element of Pearls So also the Ulcers of the Lungs are solidated or made whole by the sweet Corollate of Mercurius Diaphoreticus to wit by Virtue whereof the Epitaph of Paracelsus publisheth that the Tabes was often restored For I remembered that I in the great Heat of the 5th Month called July bored the Head of a Toad with a sharpe Stick or Staffe and that I fastened the Staffe at the other end into the Ground that the Toad being hung up might be dryed But it happened that full four dayes after I returned to the same place found the Toad alive contracting his Thighs as if he had been there only the day before because the hole was not with a straight Line in the middle of his Head but inclined a little the more unto the left side Wherefore I drave the Staffe into the middle of his Head and returning about the evening I found the Toad not only Dead but to have been wholly dryed up From whence I the more firmly perswaded my self that a Defect or Failing of the Vital Powers was not from the Dryness of the solid Parts but rather that Dryness was and did Increase in us according to the proportion of a Piece-meale extinguishment of the Vital Powers Let therefore the Radical Ignorance of the Schools depart whereby by an unrepaitable Penury as they will have it of the Radical Moisture they cover their Fault under the Ground of the Place of Burial For the Diminishment of the Gifts and Vital Powers alone sealed in the Family Administration of the implanted Spirit bringeth on Old Age as also the Extinguishment of Death intestine Calamities which is to say My Spirit shall be Diminished and my Dayes shall be Shortned Therefore let the Consideration of the Radical Moysture for the Study of Long Life depart For truly Hippocrates cals Natures themselves or the Vital Powers the Physitianesses of Diseases and the which therefore Languishing dayly Miseries of Infirmities wax strong and these departing do proclaim with lofty Shoulders a Despaire of Life as oft as the Faculties or Powers fail whether in the mean time plenty of Radical Moisture or a scantiuess of the same be present For they cease not to extend a Crow and a Stage which are dryer than any toothless Old-man unto some Ages and to be Incumbent on the laboursome gain of Reverence For because dryness begins from the Bones
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
although that action of spirits be made with the suffering and losse of their own powers yet they do not therefore transchange Bodyes into their own nature For they onely gnaw them and grind them into pouder the which also they interpret to be a calcining by water By way of example joyn thou a pound of Crocus martis to a sixfold quantity of Oyl of Vitriol then distill thou whatsoever shall be watery Thou shalt find the Vitriol of Iron or Mars Take from thence the Iron and thou hast the Vitriol of Iron A Salt I say like Vitriol whose tast is of Iron Yet retaining nothing of the Mars or Iron For thou hast a limitation from the Mars as to its efficacy but not in respect of its matter And the former spirit of Vitriol or Oyl of the vitriol of Copper shall be fixed into a certain salt onely by the odour of the Iron Again Take the same and more clear example Conjoyn thou a pound of running Mercury or Quick-silver unto a four fold quantity of Oyl of Vitriol Take away its flegme by distilling and a white precipitate shall remain in the bottom like snow Likewise If thou shalt pour on it more Oyl than is meet the Mercury will unsensibly surmount together with the Oyl Furthermore If by a Liver thou shalt take away the tartnesse from the aforesaid snow there will be a pouder of a Citron colour in the bottom which being revived or unto Life recovered shall be of equal weight with the former Mercury But the water which in washing off the salt drinks it up into it self affords a true Alum For so one onely pound of Quick-silver onely by its touch should be able by degrees to change many thousands of pounds of the sharpest Oyl of Vitriol into an Alum without any losse of its substance which same Oyl by the touch of the Iron is in like manner changed into the vitriolated salt of Mars being a noble Medicine for healing Let the action of the Mercury without an essential â—â— suffering of its substance be taken notice of And it is a Contemplation of great moment For truly a great rout of Alchymists are deluded by their own hope thinking that fixed Bodyes being solved in Corrosives gave unto these Corrosives their properties at leastwise if those dissolving Corrosives have from a voluntary motion of activity coagulated in their possession They know not I say that Spirits being wearied by acting do degenerate into a new Being To wit while they descend unto the limit of their power in acting And then we must know that every operation which tendeth unto a transmutation of both namely the Agent and Patient consisteth onely between meer Spirits But that the operation of a Body with a spirit of things without Life begins from the spiritual odour of a certain putrifaction by continuance because seeds and fermental dispositions depend thereupon and according to their own will or arbitration do command Liquors appointed for Generation Wherefore the Antients have not unfitly advertised us That the rise and continuation of the visible world is from an invisible and incorporeal Essence such as are Odours and Ferments And in our own borders Duelech growes together from an incredible Spirit the Coagulater and from an invisible Beginning For neither hath it stood in need for its nativity of Tartar brought from without of the Son of a more inward muckinesse or of the feigned curdlings of drying It is a far more calamitous thing that we carry the very vulcan of the Stone about us in our urine unto the importunate command whereof the properties of a volatile spirit do hearken For God had seemed to have loved Bruits before us if he had not directed Diseases unto a Reward and so unto good whereof a temporal punishment is not worthy But besides where a fore-seen end of punishment is present he hath from the Gift of his Bounty erected the powers of Medicines In Beasts also stones are bred but not given for a punishment nor for a Reward which grow in them for Medicines to us And therefore they also arise from a far different Root Moreover before that I proceed unto the History of the Stone I will premise some exercises First therefore In the Salt-pits of Burgundy there are at this day no more than two pits the pit of Brine and the pit of Gray But if indeed an hundred measures of both pits are boyled apart they yield far lesse salt than if they are boyled in the same quantity being conjoyned The Inhabitants admire at the Experiment and therefore they henceforward confound both Brines together For indeed the one of them containes more of a vapory or volatile salt which being boyled apart by it self with a flaming fire flyes away before its coagulation Notwithstanding meeting with another more fixed salt it is imbibed and constrained into a solid salt The example teacheth this That Bodyes of Salts do drink up their own Spirits and that their spirits in like manner do gnaw their Bodyes For truly the Brine of Burgundy being clearer than Crystal doth notwithstanding through its vapory salt spirit drink up into it self a great part of a rocky stone which therefore in time of boyling To wit while the spirits are coagulated in the more solid body of the salt settles and is scummed off with difficulty Therefore that spirit of salt although it dissolved the stone yet it therefore contracted not wedlock with the earth as that either this should stonifie or the other be made salt Yea it even from thence is manifest that although the Sea-salt had vapory or volatile parts yet it could not come unto the stone as neither to the spirit of urine for an increase Because it is that which consists of far different principles even as elsewhere concerning Digestions but the Sea-salt by how much it is a stranger with the Urine by so much it shall stir up consultations of dissolving Duelech For whatsoever dissolveth the stone of a Rock and doth hide it invisibly in it self that at least shall not perswade the original of the stone Thus far concerning a fixed Earth dissolved by the spirit of salt and of the vapory and coagulated spirit of Salt Now concerning a volatile salt decaying into a solid body Sublime thou Stibium with an equal part of Sal Armoniack by a gentle or indifferent fire thou shalt see the salt to arise tinged with divers colours Separate the colour from the salt by water and thou shalt have a pouder which with Salt-peter flyes away almost wholly into a flame But if that which is left with the Sal Armoniac be as yet twice sublimed by it self and freed from its salt thou shalt have a pouder of Stibium voyd of salt wherewith if thou shalt then mix Salt-peter it shall be no longer inflamed but as much Salt-peter as thou shalt mix with it is changed into an earth and neglects the nature of a salt For the odour of the Sulphur pierceth
Bloud putrifies yellow Choler is made and that it is false that a Cholagogal or Extracter of Choler for examples sake cures Cholerick Diseases and that it is a deceit in those who say Choler is drawn out if the other three also being first corrupted are ejected together with it Certainly there is none studious of the Truth who may not from hence presently understand That the Foundation of Healing of the Antients goes to ruine as well in respect of Humours as of the Selection of solutive Medicines Truly I admire even to amazement That the World hath not yet taken notice of the destructive danger of Laxative things The which otherwise so suddenly well perceives any wiles or subtle crafts extended over their purse For truly it is not to be doubted but that Laxative Medicines do carry a hidden poyson in them which hath made so many thousands of Widowes and Orphans For neither do they draw forth a singular Humour after them The which I have demonstrated in a singular Treatise never to have been in Nature except in the Books of Physitians For increase thou the Dose of a Laxative Remedy and a deady poyson will bewray it self Come on then Why doth that your Choler following with so swift an efflux stink so horribly which but for one quarter of an hour before did not stink For the speedinesse of flowing forth takes away the occasion of putrefaction as also of stink For it smells of a dead Carcase and not of Dung. Neither also should it so suddenly borrow such a smell of stinking dung from the Intestines Therefore the stink shewes an efficient poyson and a mortified matter drawn out of the live Body The which I prove by way of Handicraft-Operation If any one shall drink a dram of white Vitriol dissolved in Wine it presently provokes Vomit But if presently after drinking it he shall drink thereupon a draught of Ale or Beer Water c. he indeed shall suffer many stools yet wholly without stink Scammony therefore and Vitriol do alike dissolve the bloud of the Meseraick veines This indeed by its violent brackishnesse But that by the putrefactive and strong smelling poyson of Laxatives From the consideration whereof alone purging ought to be suspected by every one as a cruell and stupide Invention For if according to Galen the bloud when it putrifies is made yellow Choler therefore the stinking and yellow Liquor that is cast out by Laxative Medicines and which dissembles Choler is generated of putrefied bloud And by consequence that Laxative Medicines themselves are the putrefactives of the Bloud The which is easily collected out of Galen against the will of the Schooles For he chiefly commends Triacle because it most especially resisteth poysons He also affirms also a discernable sign of the best Triacle to be that if together with Laxative Medicines Triacle be taken undoubtedly stools shall not follow Do not these words of Galen convince that Laxatives are meer poysons To wit all the operation whereof is evaded by Triacle the Tamer of poysons unto which suspition the effects do agree Because a Purging Medicine being taken the sick and healthy do equally cast forth Liquors of the same colour odour and condition Wherefore it requires not a offending Humour before an unoffensive one but it indifferently defiles whatsoever it toucheth upon Moreover the Schooles also oppose the selective Liberty which they attribute unto solutive Medicines For if any humour of the four be putrified in Fevers and naturally betokeneth a removall of it self But if Laxatives do selectively draw out a humour from the Bloud yea in healthy persons as they will have it do cause sound flesh to melt that they may thereby obtain their scope which is to pour forth a putrified ot stinking Liquor which the paunch casts out At leastwise Laxatives shall not have the like Liberty in Fevers for drawing forth of the offending and putrified excrement For that which is corrupted hath no longer the former essence and properties which it had before its putrefaction For if the Loadstone attracteth Iron it shall not therefore draw rust unto it And therefore if a purging Medicine resolves the flesh and bloud that it may thereby extract Choler which it drawes bound unto it self by a specifical property it doth not therefore likewise draw stinking and putrified excrements included in the veines which should be the cause of Fevers Surely none should ever dye by Fevers if the two Maxims of the Schooles were supported with Truth To wit if putrified humours are the cause of Fevers And likewise if they depart selectively through purging things Besides it should be a mad Caution That purging Medicines be not given in the beginning of Fevers before the matter be troubled or rise high To wit before the maturity and Coction of the peccant matter From whence it is sufficiently manifest that loosening things should otherwise be hurtfull But if they are given after that the matter of the Disease be now well subdued the aforesaid Caution conteines a Deceit Because it attributes the effect procured voluntarily and by the benefit of Nature unto the loosening Medicine From which surely an honest Physitian doth then also more justly abstain Because it then disturbs the Crisis induceth the danger of confusion and of a Relapse For a loosening Medicine doth alwayes and by it self draw out things not cocted no otherwise than those which are afterwards called cocted ones because it is on both sides alike cruel and poy sonsome But after that Nature hath overcome the Disease it brings on lesse dammage neither is the deceit of a Laxative Medicine then so apparently manifest And so if then a loosening Medicine be given the Physitian shall seem to have conquered the Disease by his own Art But besides if all particular Laxatives should extract their own Humours by a Choyce they should of necessity also be of concernment at every station of the Disease because they are those which alwayes draw out the same Liquor and that alike stinking but they disturb as much as may be as long as Nature shall not become the Superiour Which victory of that Disease the Schooles have called Concoction Not indeed that Nature attempts to digest or Coct any thing which is vitious orwhich fals not out for her own use or profit because she is that which is governed by an un-erring Intelligence Let these Admonitions suffice concerning both the Universal Succours in Fevers I concluding with Hippocrates unto Democritus That every Solutive Medicine robs us of the strength and substance of our Body CHAP. VI. The Consideration of a Quartane Ague 1. A Quartane hath deluded the Rules of the Schooles 2. Why they know not how to cure a Quartane 3. That the wonted excuses in other events of Diseases do fail 4. A presage from a Quartane in other Fevers 5. The examination of a Quartane according to the account of the Schooles 6. The weaknesses of Galen himself 7. Failings noted in Physitians 8. Constrained
which cures every Fever at one only potion But an Hectick Fever within the course of the Moon or in a months space For it being taken in at the mouth cures the Cancer Wolf and any eating malignant Ulcer whether external or internal and likewise the Dropsie Asthma and any Chronical disease For it alone perfects the desires of Physitians as well in Physical as Chyrurgical defects The description thereof is as well in his book of the Death of things as in his great Chyrurgery and I will somewhat more manifestly declare it Take of the powder of Johannes de Vigo being prepared with thy own hand for otherwise it is adulterated by Minium being admixed with it even as also any sort of Chymical Medicine whatsoever which is set to sale is full of deceit This Powder the Element of fire extracted from the Vitriol of Venus or Copper being poured on it is to be five times cohobated with Aqua Regis by increasing the fire about the end for it is plainly fixed And it is a powder exceeding Corrosive The which afterwards let it be ten times cohobated with Aqua vitae most exactly refined and renewed at every turn until it hath brought away with it all the Corrosion And then that powder is sweet like Sugar And therefore the spirit of Wine is there called Saltaberi or Tabarzet which sounds Sugar Not because it is sweet in it self but it takes away the cortosive spirits with it self so that the remaining powder shines in its own sweetness and not borrowed from elsewhere For besides that the fire of Vitriol is sweet the very Sulphur of the Mercury being then turned inside out is of the greatest sweetness That powder is fixed and it is called Horizontal gold For I have delivered a Secret unto a few which ennobles a Physitian But to have prepared that Secret is for the first turn of great labour and the direction thereof depends on the hand of him unto whom all honour is due because he reveals such Secrets unto his little ones which the world knows not and therefore hath a low esteem of them There is also the Purging Remedy Diuceltatesson which radically cures the Gout no less than Fevers And it is called his Corralline Secret which is prepared of the Essence of Horizontal gold after this manner From the common Mercury sold in Shops abstract thou the Liquor Alkahest whereof he makes mention in his second Book of the strength or faculties of the Members in the Chap. Concerning the Liver The which is done in a quarter of an hour For saith Raymund my friends standing about me and the King being present I coagulated Quicksilver and none besides the King knew the manner how In which Coagulation that is singular that the liquor Alkahest being the same in number weight and activity prevails as much in the thousandth action as it did at the first because it acteth without a re-acting of the Patient The Mercury therefore being thus coagulated without any remainder of the Coagulater make thereof a fine powder and distill thou five times from that powder the water distilled from the whites of eggs and the Sulphur of the Mercury which by its aforesaid coagulation was drawn outwards will be made red like Coral And although the water of the Whites of Eggs may stirk yet that powder is sweet fixed enduring all the fire of the bellowes neither doth it perish in the examination of Lead yet it is spoiled of its medicinal vertue while it is reduced into a white mettal But it is for the most part given in the quantity of eight grains because it purgeth the body of man as long as it is defective and not perfectly sound It heals also the Ulcers of the Bladder Wind-pipe and Throat But since it belongs not to every Physitian to go to Corinth neither is it lawfull to prophane the Secrets of God who would remain the Dispenser hereof it hath been sufficient for me to have manifested the Theorie of Medicine That by praying seeking and knocking they may attain knowledge from whence every good gift descendeth Notwithstanding there are some particular Remedies of Fevers which although they ascend not unto the universal ampleness of general kinds yet they for the most part give satisfaction in Fevers Of which sort are the salts of Cephalical things or things for the head and likewise of Marioram Rosemary Sage Rue and the like not thinking that these salts are the Alcalies or Lixivial ones of their ashes but volatile salts and those which contain the whole Crasis or constitutive temperature of the Simples For they are famous Diaphoreticks and somewhat temperate ones The which if they are drunk in Wine or Vinegar at a due station to wit upon a fasting stomack and before the fit of intermitting Fevers or at any time of continual Fevers and sweat be procured they shall never expose a faithful Physitian to a mock Cease thou also to wonder that I propose Fevers to be cured without all evacuation if I perswade transpiration and sweats For I have also seen Fevers to be frequently cured by Simples bound on the body with the great disgrace of Physitians Lastly I will also say this that I have safely cured an hundred Quartanes by an Emplaster without a Relapse although Aurumnal ones Therefore in the Family of feverish Species's such particular remedies do oft-times reach to the top of an universal remedy Seek and ye shall find so that Medicine be not for gain For if your intention be Mercy from Charity Truth and Light descending from the Father of Lights shall meet you in the journey To whom be a rendering of Honour for ever CHAP. XV. An Answer unto Reproaches 1. An Argument against the Contemners of Sciences 2. Answers unto the Reproaches of the Galenists 3. The Chymical Medicines of the shops are adalterated 4. Corrosives wax mild by the fire 5. An Objection concerning the smaleness of the Dose 6. The dignity of Mercury and Stibium or Antimony 7. A most rare Arcanum of Volatile Salt 8. All things cry for revenge against the Galenist the Despiser of Chymistry 9. The Original of the Apothecaries shop 10. An Objection concerning the solving of Pearls and Coralls 11. After what manner things dissolving are separated from things dissolved in the stomack 12. What to Precipitate may signifie in Chymical preparations 13. A censure of some Writers of Chymistry 14. A repeated Objection privy escapes unto the more soft Tophus's or small stones of living Creatures 15. Of what sort the action of Gemms on us may be 16. What there may be in a more tender stone which operates its powder remaining safe 17. Mechanical proofs 18. Proofs from their own weapons 19. A certain wonderful and almost infinite re-acting of the Patient without a transchangeative passion of its Essence 20. An explaining it by handicraft operation 21. What Bodies being apparently dissolved may suffer in us 22. A danger unknown to the Schools 23. A Secret involved first
triumph that they propose to others what they have tasted down with the tip of their lips and so they have nor yet had access unto the inner Chambers of Phylosophy But again the Galenists will urge saying that the stones of Bezoar Crabs Snails c. being taken as well by way of a powder as being dissolved in a sharp dissolving liquor do notably profit in the Plague Fevets the disease of the Stone wounded persons and in those that are thrown down from an high place wherefore that the same thing is blockishly denied by me in Pearls Corals c. whereto I answer That gems small or flinty stones and rockie stones have much latitude and that they differ very much among themselves For first of all Gems Flints Marbles and whatsoever things have a Christalline hardness do not any thing act or suffer on us or from us unless by way of a remedy hung on and bound about the body and that so long as from the mouth they pass thorow the superfluities of the Body The virtue therefore of these is feeble because it layes hid as being shut up in a too thick body But Pearls and Corals and whatsoever stones have the rocky hardness of Shell-fishes do indeed yield to Gems in hardness yet they are not therefore concocted in the stomach of man as they are well in some birds But the stones of Bezoar Crabs c. being as yet less hard then Pearls are not of a rocky nature but they are made rather of a milky juice half cheesed and half stonified and they have the nature of a Tophus or sandy stone being neutral between a gristle and a stone even as the shells of stones in medlars peaches c. do keep a neutral and middle kind between woods and a sandy stone These things being for the truth of the matter and the better understanding thereof thus supposed I say That although the stone of Bezoar of Crabs c. as to the solide matter of their powder are in no wise digested by mans stomach yet there is in them a certain milkie and muscilaginous juice of great virtue yet of small quantity Such as also happens to be extracted out of the shaving of Harts-horn by seething If therefore thou dost a good while boil the powder of the aforesaid stones in rain or distilled water if thou separatest the decoction from the powder by straining it through a Filter but dost in distilling this decoction by a bath draw it forth thou shalt at length find some small quantity of the aforesaid Muscilage But the remaining powder as it is unconquered by boyling so also it remains undigested by our stomack And so from the small quantity of the aforesaid liquor there dependeth a reason why one only dram of that stone being powdered and taken in some liquor effecteth more then otherwise one scruple of the same doth when as in the mean time the Wine or Vinegar being drunk up at the same draught with the aforesaid powders do not dissolve the sixth part of the powder but the rest they forsake entire not changed which is manifest if thou shalt drink the stone of crabs being not beaten into powder but into pieces and after voiding them forth shalt wash them clean thou shalt find the same weight thereof which there was before and so nothing thereof to be subdued by the stomack nor any thing of those stones to be participated of by the digestion Come on then I will also press the Galenists with their own weapon for if the aforesaid Stones or Pearls being taken by way of a powder should melt in us ye attempt in vain to dissolve them Therefore it is already manifest by handicraft operation that the more tender Stones of living creatures do contain a Muscilage which Pearls Corals and rocky Stones do want yet the bodies of somethings remaining in their pouder and homogeneal and unseparable solidity as they suffer in their dissolution an action from the dissolver so also in like manner the dissolver suffers by the body dissolved without any participation in the mean time of the unchangeable body for from the Chymical Maxim The dissolvent is by the same endeavour coagulated whereby the body dissolved is dissolved And therefore if the body dissolving be taken away from the body dissolved nothing is ordinarily recovered from thence besides a water without savour being without actimony and sharpness the which surely as they are the Clients of Salts they are coagulated in the thing dissolved and stand by it as Companions Thou shalt know the same thing more clearly if thou distillest the Oyl of Vitriol from running Mercury the Oyl is coagulated with the Mercury and they both remain in the bottom in the form of snow And whatsoever is distilled from thence is meet water but that snow if it be washed is made a citron coloured powder which is easily reduced into the former running Mercury being altogether of the same weight as it was before but if thou shalt distil the water of the washing off thou hast in the bottom a meer Alum from the sharp salt of Vitriol For so dissoluents are changed although the bodies dissolved have not lost any thing of their own matter or substance And such dissolvers act on us by way of an alteration attained in their own sufferingness but not from a property partaked of from the dissolved bodies being unchanged Therefore to the argument proposed The salts of vinegar wine juice of Lemons or of the Oak and likewise of the sharp chyle of the stomach as they are vegetables and alterable by our digestion by digesting indeed are changed in us into a urinary salt notwithstanding by reason of the diversity of the thing dissolved those dissolutives suffer something from the aptness of their own convertibility yet they transfer not any thing on us of the thing dissolved that is not digestible unless it contain the digestible part of it self even as I have said concerning the milky muscilage of the stones of soulified creatures But if indeed otherwise such a dissolved body should proceed inwards into the veins which it never doth that it might communicate its endowments unto us to wit pearls or the aforesaid stones very many anguishes would follow from thence instead of succours For first since they are not digested in the stomach even as I have already proved neither in the next place shall they be able to be cocted in the second digestion because there is no passage unto the second but through the first Secondly therefore they shall never be converted into bloud but into some other superfluity of the veins Thirdly powders shall be bred in the veins and kidneys and they shall be stopped up with the powder being a forreign guest never to be drawn out by any remedy for the future These things are spoken concerning thigs dissolved by a dissolving vegetable and therefore digestible in us Notwithstanding if things are dissolved by dissolvers that are not digestible