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
Serpent prescribeth to himself Worships and Liturgies or praying services for those things whereof he hath no power in his hand but to re-smite the smiting Witch as it naturally reflects the enchantments on its own Author So perhaps it might by those who are un-discreetly scrupulous be despised for a Superstitious means but surely it is even so as it is lawful by a natural right to repulse force with force especially if that thing doth not happen so much from anger or hatred as from ones own defence and for averting of hurt which the moderation of an unblamed defence doth distinguish Wherefore even as I have already demonstrated that the most powerful or especial force of an enchantment doth depend on a natural Idea of the Witch So also it follows that the aforesaid repercussion or re-smiting is altogether lawful by reason of the natural Idea of desire whereby any one doth desire and endeavour to rid himself of the enchantment And so in repercussion none follows or is provoked or allured by virtue of the Covenant with the Evil Spirit Yea that re-smiting alone doth manifest the force of an enchantment to be altogether natural as also the impotency of the Devil In the mean time that most unhappy and wholly proud on being ashamed to confess his own impotency decieves his credulous Impes they thinking him to be the only Master bestower and ruler of that malignant and hurtful activity Wherefore also they adore the same with a serious Worship and obey him in all his Mockery Poysons therefore being thus gotten when as Satan cannot infect and confect them according to his desire as neither suit them at his pleasure and much less apply them he commands that that thing be wholly compleated by his bond-slaves that poysons may be made capable of issuing forth into the proper object of his desire For so Poysons which before were either wholly material or things altogether indifferent nor could they hurt unless by chance they were assumed or taken into the Body do now hurt Formally Seminally and Formentally through poysonous Idea's being injected CHAP. LXXVII These things which follow the Author left more imperfect undigested and uncorrected than those aforegoing SInce it hath already been demonstrated that every Disease doth consist in the Life of the sensitive Soul and in the Archeus the vital Organ hereof but that this Archeus doth conclude in him a unity and identity hereafter from hence also we must teach that curing and restoring from all Diseases doth consist in the Unity of a Remedy But the Schooles of the Humourists will argue on the contrary and will say c. Now therefore a necessity of recovery from the peace of occasional Causes with the Life being proved and so that almost all universal Secrets do prevaile unto the aforesaid appeasing and pacifying of the vital Archeus Now next it behoveth me to descend unto those very Arcanum's or Secrets and not only to hand them forth by denominating of them but also so far as charity toward my Neighbour doth permit to describe the same unto the skilful lovers of Medicine But it is not lawful to make them openly manifest that the unskilful and such as only gape after a little advantage or gain may dispose of them and commit them to the Apothecary and his wife God forbid for I have been better instructed c. I will therefore speak so far as the order of charity doth permit about the revelations of Arcanums First of all therefore Nature hath produced by the goodness of God singular or particular remedies in the vegetable Monarchy whereby Diseases also are singularly or particularly restored and cured which hitherto through a sloath of diligent searching and a covetous desire and envy of the Devil have remained hidden For so the Elixir of propriety according to Paracelsus cureth the Asthma Falling-sickness Apoplexie Palsey Atrophia or Consumption for lack of Nourishment Tabes or Consumption of the Lungs c. But because that Elixir is not prepared but by a most skilful Phylosopher who not by thinking but by knowing is perfectly and moreover doubly chosen hereunto and so hath obtained the title of an Adeptist Hence therefore out of compassion I will unfold a middle way Take of clear Aloes of the Best Myrrhe and of the best Saffron of each an ounce for if thou shalt take more thou shalt find it to be done in vain Let the two former be exactly beaten but the Saffron because it is not beaten unless it be dryed let it rather be made into a round figure by pownsing let them be put in a most capacious and strong Glass and sealed with the melted neck of the Glass and let it be distilled with a moderate heat that the vessel burst not asunder until thou shalt see the whole lump to have grown together in the bottom and a cleer oyl with a water to be circulated in the sides of the Glass then let the neck of the Glass be opened and pour into a pint of Cinnamon water and distil it by moist sand whereon let boyling water be poured by degrees until not any thing doth any longer drop out of the beak of the Alembick and with this Medicine I have presently dissolved as well a Quartane Ague as a continual Fever So that he who over night had received his Sacro-sainted Viaticum and the extream unction of Oyle hath had me his Guest about his bed at dinner Nature hath also produced in the Sub-terranean or mineral Monarchy a certain Mineral the which for its singularity is called by Paracelsus the first or masculine Mettallus The which from its Metallick disposition is of necessity cloathed with Metallick Mercurie and Sulphur to wit of a liquid Mercurie not adhering to the fingers and of a Sulphur burnable with a skie-coloured flame But this Sulphur is distilled with its corrosive and so often cohobated or imbibed by pouring on it its own liquor until it pass thorow the Alembick in the forme of a red Oyl which Oyle is then at length most exactly cleansed from every whit of its corrosive not indeed prepared by a separation of its salt and Mercurie but anatically or unhurtfully reduced wholly into the form of an Oyl For that thing or matter as it is as yet oylie is not to be altered by the whole power of the sensitive Soul or to be applyed to the Life Wherefore it ought to be transchanged into a Mercurial juice which Paracelsus teacheth and calleth the Wine of Life because it doth not cure Diseases after the manner of other Arcanum's by a cleansing away and banishment of every hurtful matter besides it renewes the strength being lost in the Body in general and restoreth the inequalities of the strength And therefore neither is it in vain called by Paracelsus the Essence of the Members indeed the whole Spire and top of hope for long Life But how much Light I have brought unto the Writings of Paracelsus he alone hath known who
unto Colours therefore we leave the Speculation of those unto others being content with the attainment of the Cherionial or occult quality Last of all notwithstanding we must answer to an objection To wit wherefore is the Fountain Tonneletius with the Plenty of its hungry and hot Salt said rather to Cool and to be troublesome to the Stomack I will give Satisfaction The hungry Salt although it be hot in its first qualities no otherwise than as Oyl of Vitriol Sulphur Aqua Fortis c. are yet it Cooleth by a third and proper Cherionial quality to wit as either being hurtful through its super-abounding it weakens our heat but especially because through its sharpness it dissolves the Secondary humour or immediate nourishment of the Stomack and makes it unfit for nourishing through the scantiness of which lively Liquor it is no wonder if the inflowing and begged heat of the Stomack do suffer CHAP. XCIX A Sixth Paradox 1. In what manner Foods are not for hurt 2. A Paradox out of the Text of holy Scriptures against the Dietary part 3. It is proved also 1 by an Experiment 2. From the destributive Justice of God 3. From the indication or betokening of Remedies 4. From a Rule 4. From whence the necessity of a Diet came 5. One Precept 6. The praise of Sobriety 7. How the Waters may pass speedily thorow the Midriffs 8. A Purgation 9. The manner and requisites of drinking How much is to be drunk 10. A commendation of Elecampane prepared 11. The sick must drink speedily an why 12. Returning after what manner 13. When he must Dine 14. Whether the Water of the Spaw be to be mixed with pure Wine 15. And indeed after dinner 16. Three Digestions 17. Why he must not sleep after his Dinner at the Spaw 18. The hour of Rest I Will now subjoyn a few things concerning Diet and the manner of using the Waters of the Spaw That thing in the first place through experience being our guide we have seen in the Dietary part of Medicine that the quality of Meats or Foods as such doth no where bring Dammage unless where a weakened bed-rid person and a defectuous Remedy is present For God saw that whatsoever he had made was good and consequently that whatsoever he had ordained for meat was a good food but that its quantity onely is able to hurt For eat thou whatsoever meats thou wilt for example sake and be thou wounded so thou shalt not exceed in quantity and thou hast apt Balsames and consolidating Potions of Wounds thou shalt feel no pressure and no dammage from the Meats no otherwise than as if thou wert nourished with their most delicate choice A Testimony of which thing Souldiers and poor Folks shall give Unto whom the Judge or Arbitrator of things had seemed to have been severe if in Diseases they ought to be fed with Phesants Partridges and other huckstery of Kitchins For Nature despiseth the Rules of curiosity as being defended by that aid that she were vainly to desire a Help and Succours against a Disease by a Remedy which from a small quantity of Food is not able to satisfie the Defects which are to be prevented For whatsoever ought to attempt the single combate of a Disease surely by a stronger right it ought to divert Symptomes which are to arise from Meats that I say which is handed forth or instituted for the brushing off of blemishes or hurts Therefore the necessity of a Diet is believed to have been brought in from the penury of the more profound Medicines and not from the dainty allurements of Foods That one Precept of Diet is to be observed I counsel him that drinks of the Waters of the Spaw that he study Sobriety and that he eat Sparingly like his neighbours For what shall it profit to accuse the Health of our bordering neighbours by the Waters of the Spaw if we live the more deliciously and with too much fullness Therefore let the Supream defence of Long Life although it be a cruel thing to those that are unaccustomed be Sobriety Otherwise those things which savour do nourish best and a hungry Man will easily concoct those Foods which do savour him most By that onely rule of Diet the Waters will pass thorow him safely speedily and pleasantly But besides it shall be profitable to brush off the filth from the Stomack but the more crude and less sincere Chyle from the Meseraick Veines Which shall comodiously be done if one dose of the Pills Rufi being duely prepared and not from the perswasion of gain be for the space of three daies continually taken before the Waters Or if he listeth not to wait the space of three daies let him infuse an ounce and half of Conserve of Roses in eight ounces of the Water of Pouhontius adding thereto a Scruple of Salt of Tartar Let him drink the strained infusion He that is to drink of the Water of the Spaw let him endeavour first to unload his Belly betimes in the Morning and about the Twilight let him drink twelve ounces of Pouhontius and ascend the Mountain From whence when he shall be come down let him drink twenty or thirty ounces of Savenerius at the first of the Morning For he must passe by degrees unto things not accustomed As also Pouhontius shall premeditatingly open the branching passages not with a loaded quantity He must add to the quantity daily even unto a sufferance as every one is his own Judge The which thereby shall be easily conjectured because if they shall drink as much as it behoveth them after the example of Hippocrates they are in a good frame and do easily bear it But at the time of Drinking in stead of Annise Myva or Conserve of Elecampane being taken the Water that is drunk is easily strained thorow the Midriffs But let the appointed dose be speedily drunk seeing the progress of the Fountain is hastened and therefore let the first Water be cocted if indeed that is to be said to be truly cocted which doth not depart into nourishment and expelled before the last Water approach which renders the Action of the native Heat renewed or frustrated He returning from the Fountain to the Village let him slowly proceed that not Sweat but Urine which is in his Desires may be provoked But let the hour of Dinner be when the Stomack shall be dispatched of the Waters least the remainder of the Water being almost concocted should over-hastily bring the crude juyce into the Veines It hath been doubted whether the Water of the Spaw be with conveniency to be mixed with pure or unmixt Wine I will say That so Wines shall be made easily passable and the passages shall be kept passable and therefore with the borderes I shall counsel to admix the Fountains with their Foods that is with their Drinks And therefore because he must eat sparingly about the tenth or eleventh hour he is to go to Pouhontius at the third hour because we
opinions found out And seeing that a Syllogisme doth cause a certain remembrance of that in the learner which he knoweth and no other thing but Sciences are not gotten by remembrance as if all knowledges of all things had fore-existed in us Hence a Syllogisme cannot bring forth or finde out Sciences which onely maketh knowledges found out and known more clear But I know and confess that the knowledge of my understanding doth dwell immediately in understanding and since according to Aristotle those immediate knowledges that is intellectual ones are not to be demonstrated it also followes that every kinde of true or intellectual knowledge is not to be demonstrated that is true Sciences cannot proceed from demonstration For every demonstration consisteth in Discourse and Reason indeed it is a simple and perfect reasoning But according to Aristotle the knowledge of principles is not in reason but altogether above it Therefore to know by a Syllogisme cannot be an intellectual essentiall as neither a principiative thing or from a former cause but only from suppositions of predicaments and Rules being placed there is derived a supposed opinion of the Syllogizer I have written more and sufficient things concerning this matter elsewhere Therefore blessed Jerome doth not unworthily compare the art of making Syllogismes to the Plagues of Aegypt and he calls Logical demonstrations dog-like discourses But the Apostle would have them to be wholly avoided doing nothing through contention and to strive with words profitable for nothing but to the subversion of the hearers Because they are that which do quench Faith and the rewards of Faith But they say Logick is the finder out of the meanes to wit it is for the finding out of the meanes and form for demonstration Dost thou think that perhaps the Apostle was ignorant what and how much Logick could profit that he speaks without besides and against the Spirit of truth when he commands Logick to be avoided or is more to be attributed to such feeble discourse than to the Apostles Command But truly Logick doth not finde out the meanes of being having doing or knowing but onely of a more brief shewing some kinde of thought or opinion and so it invents composed brawlings even to oppose the truth For therefore doth the Apostle call Logick by a Title despised enough contentions Which surely he had not done if it were the Mother of Sciences the finder out of profitable meanes or if it were profitable to Christians Therefore the Schooles teaching and doing otherwise supposing Logick as necessary and daily much using it do oppose themselves to the Command of the Apostle Therefore invention in Logick is not properly invention as neither is demonstrable Science a true and intellectual one Because we do not properly finde out those things which we do any manner of way know as we do not finde out what things we already have in the hand or in the Chest but things not known before are properly invented or found out even as also things not had nor possessed are gotten by invention or gift For when any one sheweth me lapis Calaminaris the preparing of Cadmia or Brasse Oare the content of or what is contained in Copper the mixture and uses of Aurichalcum or Copper and Gold which things I knew not before he teacheth demonstrateth and gives the knowledge of that which before there was ignorance of But such like things Logick never taught Therefore Logical invention is a meer re-taking of that which was known before And therefore what is not known Logick knowes not For our Spirit was already before in the possession of that which they promise is to be found illustrious by Logick Because it is impossible to know whether the premises are true appearing or false unless the knowledge of the termes shall be in us first with all knowledge of their matching or suiting confirming Therefore the whole service office and profit of Logick consisteth onely in two things to wit that the teacher may be able distinctly to imprint his opinion in the hearer and that the hearer may stir up his memory or remembrance through the conjoyning fitting or squaring matching and suitableness of the termes Which thing indeed is not the inventive office of Sciences but a certain following order of discourse to that which was found out Lastly neither doth any thing so made any way have respect to Sciences but onely to words But Wisdom the Son of the everlasting Father of Lights onely gives Sciences or knowledges But the meanes of obtaining Sciences are onely to pray seek and knock In the mean time I wonder at the so great blindness of the Schooles on every fide in so greatly extolling and magnifying Logick Truly I could desire to know let the Schooles tell me what Science Logick hath ever brought forth to light whether happily Geometry Musick making of Glasse Printing Husbandry Medicine drawing or conducting of Water or Mineralls of Warring of Arithmetique of Building or any profitable Science verily none Therefore at length with blushing must the Schooles of Logick confess that the same thing hath befallen Logick which hath hitherto the Doctrine of Galen To wit that through boasting deceits and ignorances it hath deceived the credulous World But the Heathens in setting demonstrations and Sciences to sale have had no other light than what hath flowed from corrupted nature seduced by dark opinions into disorder and inordinatenesses slavishly obeying the changes of circumstances and opinions springing from thence These things therefore have I communicated to learned men who at length have confessed that Logick was given to be drunk by young men at that age wherein they could not bear any other more sound meat and that it served them for the sharpening of their wit I would God that Logick did not serve for divers abuses and that being once drawn in in youth it did not afford a plentiful age of pernicious wits and of Logical deceipts To which I add That deceipt is not wanting if they may in the mean time commend Logick for true Philosophy for the finder out of Sciences They say but Logical Discourse is at leastwise very necessary for Divines whereby they may refute the subtleties of Heresie That thing I have judged would be to be wise above the Apostle and so to commend the abuses of the Schooles above the holy Scriptures For Gospel truth desires not Logick or contendings but it requires godliness of life in Faith an example of living an uncorrupted conversation abstinence from inordinate desires and pride of life thâ—â— the Word of God may be made fruitful It hath been sufficiently disputed by enlightned Teachers from the beginning of the Church many testifie with me CHAP. VII The ignorant Natural Philosophy of Aristotle and Galen 1. Aristotle is altogether ignorant of Nature 2. That thing is proved 3. What Nature is among Christians 4. The same thing is again confirmed by thirteen other Reasons 5. In Nature there is the Agent the matter
forced to a mixture with the Circulate Salt of Paracelsus altogether looseth its fixedness and at length may be changed into a Liquor which also at length passeth into an un-savory water and that that water is of equall weight with its Salt from whence it sprang But the Plant fleshes bones Fishes and every such like I have known how to reduce into its meer three things whence afterwards I have made an un-savory water But that a Mettall by reason of the undissolveable co-mixture of its own seed and the Sand quellem are most hardly reduced into Salt I have learned therefore by the fire that God before there was a day created the Water and Air and of the Water an Elementary Earth which is the Sand. Quellem Because it was the future Basis or foundation of Creatures for man their Standard-defender and therefore in the very beginning it ought to be created although in its own nature it was not truly primo-genial or first-born Wherefore I finde two onely primitive Elements although there is mention made of neither in the holy Scriptures because they are comprehended under the Title of Heaven But with the two he also created the Earth Wherefore he created two great Lights that the Moon and the lesse by shining might govern the Water but that the greater should shine upon the Earth But I shall by and by teach that these first-born Elements are never changed into each other Indeed the Water putrifying by continuance in the Earth doth obtain a locall or implanted Seed And therefore it passeth either into the Liquor Leffas for every Plant or into the Minerall juyce Bur according to the particular kindes chosen by the direction of the Seedes Which Seedes are replenished by the Ferment of the Earth at first empty and void and then straightway by the blessing of the Spirit boren upon the Waters But my experience of the fire hath taught me to wit that the three first things the Salt Sulphur and Mercury of the Water do alwayes remain undivided whether in the mean time the water be lifted up in manner of a Vapour in the form of a Cloud or be made thin like unto invisible things or at length also it doth flote in its antient shape of water For that Paracelsus would have the water by evaporating to be wholly brought to nothing let that be his own Idiotisme or property of speech at leastwise not to be winked at by the ingenious Distiller Truly I have certainly found that the water being lifted up into the Atomes or Moats of Clouds yet doth alway remain the same in number and water in kinde which the Atomes of the Mercury of the water do shew to us in the likeness of a Cloud But there is never made in the water a seperation of the three former things and much lesse any essentiall transmutation or changing For truly there is a simple turning outward of the inward parts by the fire the which again return inward as oft as the Vapour is co-thickned into drops But the cause why I may think the Earth not to be reckoned among the primary Elements although it was also created in the beginning is because it may at length be turned into water by the depriving of its essence And therefore I believe the water to be the first and most simple body seeing that never returns into Earth but by the vertue of the Seeds and so the water takes the turns of a composed body before the Earth or Sand Quellem be made Which thing I shall hereafter more largely demonstrate CHAP. IX The Earth 1. That the Fire is neither an Element nor co-mingled materially with Bodies nor that it is a matter nor that it hath a matter in it 2. The Earth is not a part of the thing mixed 3. The Virgin-Earth is demonstrated by Handicraft operation 4. Grounds or Soils in the Earth are distinguished 5. The Water within the Earth doth more than a thousand times exceed the water of the Sea and Rivers 6. The true Original of Fountains 7. How Waters do of their own accord ascend 8. The continuity or holding together of a thread is proved in the Waters 9. By what chance the Earth happens to Bodies that are believed to be mixt 10. The number of Elements and their temperaments are most destructive trifles after that the same are translated into the art of healing 11. The Earth is the Wombe but not the Mother of Bodies and that is demonstrated by many Arguments 12. Water and Air do not convert any other thing into themselves 13. What kinde of thing mixture is and what the adjoyning or application of Bodies 14. Objections concerning Glasse and the Tile or Brick are resolved 15. The Operations of the Fire of Hell 16. How out of Glasse Sand may be safely separated from its Alcali or Lixiviall Salt 17. That the Center of the World is sometimes changed THerefore neither is the Fire an Element nor is it materially co-mixed in Bodies because I will shew the Fire neither to be a matter nor to have it in it self Yea the Earth doth no where offer it self to be co-mixt with any natural body besides it self which may be re-taken thence by any labour Therefore I have lamented and been angry with my self that the foundation of healing hath been stuft with trifles and that the sick should be constrained to yield obedience to so great mockeries But I name the original Earth of the Virgin-Element the constant Body of Sand it self but the rest of every kinde of Earth the fruit of the Earth from a Mineral off-spring The which by the art of the fire is sufficiently and over proved For that the Sand is the original Earth first of all its hard reducement into water proveth because the Sand out of a flint or an Adamant may be sooner reduced into water than the Sand Quellem And then that thing also the Spade proveth because in digging truly divers Soils do meet nigh the light indeed made to differ in colours and thickness and the which although by the rustical or homely Etymologie of the Schooles they are believed to be black white yellow read Earths c. yet they are fruits of the Earth and do consist of a Seed under which is a Sand also elsewhere manifold in its varieties of Soils as well in one onely as in divers places at length under those doth the Sand reside which our Countreymen call Keybergh or the flinty Mountain from whence do flow the originall of Rocks and Mountains and the chief riches of Mines At length the last of them all the white or boyling Sand Quellem doth shew it self in a living and vitall Soil which the Spade or Mattock never pierceth For how much soever Sand and Water thou shalt take away from thence so much doth there succeed in the room of that which was taken away filling up again the same place This Sand I say being unmixt is a certain Hair-cloth or sieve and
the air which is contrary to his supposition for seeing the air is of the same heat about A and about D the Liquor B C shall also necessarily take rest Because the quality of the air which encompasseth is the moving cause of the water B. C. acting with an equall strength and giving an equall tenour Now through the supposition of that which is false I will demonstrate what may follow upon his ignorance Let I say the water B. C. according to his observation be changed into air In the first place this observation cannot be admitted without rarefying caused by heat Nor can that rarefying be granted without an increase of place beside the heat And the increase of place cannot subsist without the enlarging or breaking of the Vessel Because he confesseth the Glasse to be exactly shut with a continuation of the Glasse without ruine or poriness 2. A transchanging of the water into air cannot be granted without co-thickning and restraining and restraint is not given without the addition of parts by pressing together actually within the same space or magnitude Which ought altogether to be named a condensing of the air which in this place cannot be made but by cold alone which supposeth the air to turn into water therefore not the water into air Since therefore neither heat nor cold can turn water into air much lesse shall that which is temperate do that For that this doth not beget an alteration in those Elements Likewise air is not turned into water because this conversion cannot be admitted being made by rarefaction because the rarefying of the air doth not happen in this place without the mediation of heat But Heer will have it that the air is co-thickned into water by cold Therefore water shall not be generated of air by heat 2. That transchanging of air into water cannot be admitted but by condensing and restraining which cannot happen in a Glasse perfectly shut but by cold Which agent upon the air being shut up within A and D should change it into water according to the supposition of Heer For so water had been increased by generation in Vessels perfectly shut Which contradicteth his own words This pretious Liquor perished it is no more it hath ceased to be and that indeed in the raging winter Therefore since neither heat nor cold can co-thicken air into water much lesse shall that do it which is temperate Therefore never It is a wonder therefore why it hath not hindered the drying up of the Liquor in Vessels Since according to his own prattle those should be onely buried under the Snow that they might be filled with water Now there shall not hereafter be need of rain if the Cave being perfectly shut and cold continual Cisterns should be made And likewise when the water should over-weigh the air that water shall fall into the bottom of a great Vessel very closely shut from whence as oft as one would list the water should be drawn out And so that Vessel should be changed into a winter Fountain For as Heer saith The Vessel was very closely shut it wanted little holes neither had it need of opening as well for the entrance as the transpiration of the air But if a new air might afterwards enter the same way and by the same meanes whereby the water that was changed into air the Glasse being shut flew out Hereafter therefore sweet water shall not be wanting to Marriners in a Ship if by the cold of the night the air growes together by drops into water Venice and Antwerp shall frame Fountains in the belly of a Brasse Cock which in the Pinacle of the Temple sheweth the windes For by the night-cold the air shall weep being turned into water And although the Pipe be moyst to those that play on Flutes that is not from the air Otherwise Organ-Pipes also should be moyst within which is false For the air utters the sound or tune and the salt vapour drops water out of the Pipe They having pressed air of one ell together in a gun to the space of 14 fingers even in the cold of winter and so far is it that the air so pressed together in excelling cold was changed into water that it cast out a leaden Bullet thorow an Oken Plank more strongly than a hand-Gun or Pistollet Now I will proceed to prove that thing by positive Reasons Because an applied esteem or thinking hath on every side overshadowed the Schooles with a manifold absurdity CHAP. XI The Essay of a Meteor 1. A vapour raised from the heat of water differs from that which is made by cold 2. That Air is not made of water 3. That air can neither by art or nature be brought into water 4. That the Air doth not subsist without an actuall vacuum or emptiness 5. It is proved by Handicraft operation that the subtilizing or rarefying of Art however exact or fine it be is nothing but a sifting 6. By handy operation the same thing is shewen in the sifting or making of leaf-Gold 7. The water is examined by three proportionable things and the Doctrine of necessity in the highest degrees of cold of the middle Region of the Air is delivered 8. The likeness of Mercury with water 9. The nature of Mercury 10. The rashness of antient Chymists concerning Mercury 11. That earth and water are never made one thing by any co-mixture 12. How art exceedes nature 13. The Earth is properly the fruit of the two primary Elements 14. A neere Reason of an uncapacity in Mercury of being destroyed 15. Aquae fortesses do not operate upon the Center of Mercury 16. Nor the Spirit of Sea-salt upon the body of it 17. The inward Sulphur of Mercury 18. How water may give a weight more weighty than it self 19. After what manner there is an ordinary piercing of Bodies in the way of nature 20. In the way of nature there are not the three first things although in its own simpleness there is a conceivable difference of kinde which is to receive the Seedes 21. Smoak is meer water 22. Why Clouds do stink 23. What the Dew is 24. What a mist is 25. Wherefore it behooved the Air in the middle Region of the Air to be cold 26. In this cold all seeds seperated by Atomes or Motes do die and therefore the water returns into the simplicity of its own Element but in Earth and Water if things are spoiled of their seed they do not return unto that simplicity but do conceive a new seed 27. By Handicraft operation the errour of Paracelsus is laid open 28. The errour of the Galenists about the savours of things Elementated 29. What the Gas of the water is 30. The unconstancy of Paracelsus concerning the seperation of Elements from Elements IT is already sufficiently manifest that the water by the force of heat is lifted up in manner of a vapour which vapour nevertheless is nothing but water made thin and remains as before and therefore being
silent concerning the Equinoctial Line and its wonderfull properties that a Canon being discharged on one side of the Stone not any noyse or trembling should be heard on the other side thereof the which therefore is called a mute one So also we must needes consider that there are side folding-doores or Gates of Peroledes in the Air because the windes going forth for the most part with a side motion are also by the Blas of the Stars agreeably carried a crosse their bounds From the aforesaid Doctrine of Gas I at length object against my self If the water be frozen by cold into snowes Hail and Ice then the water shall not be dissolved by cold into Gas if of a uniform Agent and Patient there ought to be the same action and effect Where I must seriously note That the Water freezeth it self but is not frozen efficiently by another For although cold may be hitherto thought to congeal yet that is onely occasionally not effectively The water therefore after the sense of its measure perceives the cold of the air not indeed a certain absence or privation of heat even as I have already demonstrated by an ordinary example in Helvetia but as a positive cause in a naturall quality For truly first of all it is without doubt and is manifest by the sight that the cold Air doth by degrees consume Water Snow and Ice yet these two more slowly and the other more swiftly In the next place it is easie to be seen that whatsoever the Air thus privily steales away that presently for that very cause passeth over into an invisible Gas If therefore the cold of the Air should harden water into Ice a further action of the Air would also the Ice being now made continually cease but the consequent is false therefore also the Antecedent For the Sulphur of the water doth easily wax dry and is divided by the cold wherefore the Mercury and Salt of the water perceiving the frost of the Air that would seperate the Waters from the Waters and that they ought to suffer the extension and drying up of their Sulphur and so an alltogether violent impression of the seperater and that they do desire to remain as they are Hence the whole water at once doth arm it self by a Crust that it may resist the seperater Which thing indeed it could not accomplish but that also some part of the Sulphur hath already suffered an extenuating of it self and so also in this respect the Ice doth swim upon the water But that the Sulphur of the water although it was extenuated in the Ice yet hath not laid aside the nature of water is proved by handicraft-operation Fill a glassen and great Bottle with pieces of Ice but let the neck be shut with a Hermes Seal by the melting of the glasse in the same place Then let this Bottle be put in a balance the weight thereof being laid in the contrary Scale and thou shalt see that the water after the Ice is melted shall be weightier by almost an eighth part than it self being Ice Which thing since it may be a thousand times done by the same water reserving alwayes the same weight it cannot be said that any part thereof was turned into air For such is the continuance and constancy of the Elements that although the water departs into a vapour into Gas into Ice yea into composed bodies yet the auntient water alwayes materially remaineth in some place masked by ferments and seedes coming upon it and else-where onely by the importunities of the first qualities made to differ in the Relolleum of Paracellus that is without a seed But from what hath been said before Some remarkable things do arise 1. That the water hath a certain kinde of sense or feeling and so that all Beings do after some sort partake of life Come let us worship the King by whom all things live 2. Seeing that the water doth not incrust it self in the fabrick of a vapour therefore a vapour as well in the cause as in the manner is more acceptable to the water than a Gas is And that thing doth argue in the water something like to choice 3. And that therefore a vapour doth sooner return into water than into Gas 4. That the changing of water into a vapour is in respect of the seperater oblique or crooked and as it were by accident but that Gas consisteth of a proper appointment of the air whereby the air doth seperate the waters from the waters 5. That the air is far more cold in it self than the water 6. That it is dry by it self 7. That the unity or connexion of entire parts is as acceptable to nature as the dividing of the same is to things opposite 8. That the fabrick of Gas shall afford another intimate principle to the water since it hath not a compositive beginning or part that is the cause of some small difference of kinde besides that which is touched by heat in the rise of a vapour 9. That all created things by how much the more simple they are by so much the more of the same kinde yet an every way most simple homogeniety or sameliness of kinde is not found in bodies 10. That the Sulphur of the water being extenuated in the Ice is the cause of smoothness in congealed things but not the enclosing of a forreign air because alwayes and every where water doth exclude the Wedlock of air 11. That the cold and dryness of the air can act nothing else into the water but to extenuate its Sulphur But that the congealing or hardening it self is an action proper to the water whereby it puts a stop to the seperater 12. That the air acts upon the water without the re-acting of this and the suffering of the air since it is appointed by divine right the seperater of the waters 13. That even in unsensible naturall things re-action differeth from resistance For truly there is no re-action of the water on the air and yet the water is with a resistance 14. That the Schooles have erred because they have dictated every action of nature to be made with a re-acting of the Patient and a suffering of the agent 15. That the changing of Gas into air is impossible 1. For otherwise the air should alwayes increase into a huge body and by consequence all water had long since failed 2. Because besides that which I have elsewhere demonstrated that the air can by no meanes return again into water the same thing is manifest from the but now aforesaid particulars 3. For truly it is proper to water to suffer by air and not likewise to re-act on the air Therefore air being once made by water should alwayes remain air seeing a returning agent is wanting which may turn air into water 4. But for air by it self to return into water opposeth a generall Maxim That every thing as much as in it lies doth desire to remain in it self 5. Especially because air
fore-going Chapters I now at length proceed to a diligent examination of the Air. For I have therefore said that it is to be proved by Handicraft-operation that water is not from the co-pressing of air how cold soever it be and so that they have hitherto erred in the mixing of the Elements originall of Fountains c. But the Handicraft operation is true that air may be pressed together in an Iron Pipe of an ell about the length of fifteen fingers at the expansion or enlarging of which co-pressed air the sending forth of a small Bullet thorow a Board or Plank should happen no lesse than if it were driven out of a Hand-gun Which thing surely could not so come to passe if the air by so great a pressing together of it self under the cold of wintery Iron were to be changed into water For from thence have I first of all learned the matter and conditions of the air that it should sometimes most easily sustain a pressing together and enlarging of it self as the sight doth shew From whence I consequently have supposed that by all meanes there must needes be in the air enlarged some free space and vacuum according to the double extension of it Suppose thou if from the breadth of twenty eight fingers air be shut back under a Pipe of five fingers without any destruction of air it followes that almost the fingers and almost half of the air are void of a body For either of the two must needes be so under this mechannick proof that either absolutely there is ordinarily granted a vacuum in the nature of the air or a piercing of bodies in the air being pressed together as was said Many surely will with me more easily admit of a vacuum than of an existence of divers bodies in the same place Seeing a vacuum doth not far differ from nothing and since the action of nothing is more weak than the action of a doubled Being And since nature began of nothing it is neerer to nothing than to a double Being And so nature doth more skirmish against a double Being For Gun-powder over-turns Mountains Mines and Cities But an example of the same force is never offered in behalf of a vacuum But besides I again thus prove an ordinary vacuum in nature in the air Let a piece of Candle be placed in the midst of the bottom of a dish being fastened to its melted Tallow in the bottom Let it burn and let water be powred round about it to two or three fingers space but let a deep Cupping-glasse be set over the flame the flame appearing three fingers space out of the water so that the mouth of the Glasse set over it may stand upon the bottom of the dish Thou shalt straightway see the place of the air in the aforesaid free Glasse but the water by a certain sucking to be drawn upwards and to ascend into the Glasse in the place of diminished air and at length the flame to be smothered wherein many things come to hand First true things 1. And in the first place it is not to be doubted but that the flame is a kindled smoak 2. That that smoak is the body Gas 3. That a smoakiness or fuliginous vapour doth ascend from the top of the burnt smoak 4. That one part of the Tallow or Wax is easily extended into ten thousand fold as much as it self From whence I conclude that the place of the air ought not to be lessened by the flame but necessarily to be increased unless some place in the air were empty which is lessened Nor otherwise doth it want an absurdity that an Element should be brought to nothing or consumed For indeed a Gun or fiery Mines or Burroughs should not work those monstrous things of our age nor the breakings asunder of the hardest and greatest stones in Mines unless a small quantity of powder being kindled as it were at one moment did send forth ten thousand times as much flame as it self at least which flame cannot be stayed with the former place of the Powder it rather breaks asunder all things than that smoak should pierce smoak or flame flame 5. To which particulars the extension of the air through the heat of the flame hath access and not a pressing of it together as it otherwise appeares to the common sort Lastly let a sulphurated Toreh or Candle be hung up by a thred in a Glasse-bottle but let there be some small quantity of water in the Bottle and let the Bottle be exactly stopped with the bark of the Cork-Tree that nothing breath out Thou shalt see the flame and smoak of the Sulphur to fill up the whole floore or space of the Bottle in which the air is and at length the fire to be quenched Yet that there is not made a lessening of the air nor a sucking of the water upwards because the water ought to be put in the place of the air so that sucking here should make no gain nor should recompence the defect in the air Well indeed because the cover being opened a sucking is discerned But the flame doth not so toughly stick on the Candle that it may be for the lifting up so great a weight of water which flame is dispersed from its Candle by the least blast And so the flame doth not immediately lift up the water but a sucking being caused through a consuming of some part in the air doth lift up the water and for many dayes the water remains as yet advanced after the extinguishing of the flame Wherefore I have meditated that the air hath pores or little holes which should suffer a violent constriction of the air in the Pipe and some certain naturall annihilation in the dish But that the Air should be co-thickned in the Glasse by reason of the heat flame and smoak that opposeth Mathematicall Demonstration And the Instrument sheweth that by how much the degrees of the encompassing air are measured the heat doth enlarge but not contract the air Therefore the aforesaid objection opposeth the supposed position wherein it is granted that there is made an addition of matter in the Air by a new matter of flame and smoak But if it be said that there is something in the Air that is inflameable which is consumed by the flame of the Candle Now a new absurdity ariseth To wit that some body is plainly annihilated or burnt up by the flame and in burning up that it is not enlarged Again by supposing something to be wasted away it is at leastwise necessary that that inflameable matter be turned into nothing or into something But it is the property of fire that in burning up it doth extend every thing that is inflameable but doth not presse that thing together As before I have taught by Gun-powder But if we say that the air in the Glasse is lessened by the flame now I have what I intended To wit that there is in the air something that is lesse than
should go to ruine no otherwise than as doth very often happen in the burrowes of Mines Where those that dig Mettalls are stifled not through want of air abounding nor also alwayes through a choaking poyson but especially for that the air in the Burrowes being filled by the Gas of the Minerall is not renewed And so from hence it also happens that the Lights and Lamps are presently of their own accord extinguished together with the diggers Wherefore they do beat the Burrowes very much and do draw out the air that is filled up with the exhalation with divers Engines and powre on them and inspire into them new air But the air doth refuse too much exhalation no otherwise than as the water doth of the air and any other thing violently coupled with it in the same Mine Let there be a brassen Bottle in whose bottom let the water be A the air B the neck C the hole of the Bottle D by which with a Sypho or Pipe the air may be strongly snuffed up But then let the neck be rowled about that it may violently withhold the air under it I say therefore that while the neck is again swiftly rowled about that it gives utterance to the air For it shall not onely snuffe up the air B that is pressed together but also together with it A shall wholly fly upwards with a great force The air therefore doth sustain an unvoluntary co-pressing of its emptiness therefore it also brings up the water A with it which surely sheweth that a vacuum is more pleasing than the pressing together of the air because it is that which approacheth to the unvoluntary penetration of a body Now therefore of a vacuum an impossible thing with Aristotle is made a thing ordinarily required of nature Notwithstanding those porosities of the air however they may be actually void of all matter nevertheless they have in them a Being a Creature that is some reall thing not a fiction nor a naked place onely but that which is plainly a middle thing between a matter and an incorporeall Spirit and neither of the two I say of the number of those things which in the beginning of the Chapter concerning forms I have denied to be a substance or accident It is the Magnall or sheath of the air the which seeing it hath not in created things its like therefore it refuseth to be made manifest by that which is like unto it The Magnall indeed is not Light but a certain form assisting the air and as it were its companion and as it were conjoyning to it by a certain Wedlock An assistant I say not conjoyned to its essence and therefore an associate in its pores To wit by this the Blas of the Stars is immediately and without hinderance extended on every side and by a momentany motion but not by a thousand generations of a thousand kindes finished as it were at one onely moment as oft as the light or heavenly influences do strike inferiour bodies These very things are the fables of the Schooles to wit least they should be compelled to grant one accident to passe over from subject into subject they had rather that a thousand generations of a thousand particular kindes of light should be made in an instant while the Sun doth at so far a distance shake his beams at us For that which the Schooles do in this respect determine to be as an unpossible thing I will teach to be the ordinary course of nature in the entrance of Magnum oportet Now therefore the natures of Gas and Blas are sufficiently manifest and which way Blas may descend unto us The Doctrines of the Schooles concerning the windes are to be added First of all the Schooles of Aristotle do teach that the winde is a dry exhalation but not an air lifted up from the Earth by the vertue of heat the which when it is hindered by a Cloud from climbing upwards it as furious runneth down side-wayes and effecteth the strength or force of so great an heap or attempt As if it had lost its antient lightness through the first repulse of the Clouds and that therefore being mad it runs down sidewayes as if there were a continuall co-weaving of the Clouds nor should there in any wise be granted any entrance and any passage to the climbing exhalation being once repulsed by so small a Cloud as though a Bottle filled with air and pressed down under the water but ascending should finde a hand against it and therefore should run down sidewayes thorow the water and as if it had lost its former endeavour upwards for the future so as having forgotten to climbe upwards although it should not finde a continuall Cloud it should wish thenceforward rather to be carried sidewayes For neither have they considered that the side motion of the windes ought to be broken or weakened and also of necessity to be more feeble than its motion upwards and so that the winde is more able to beat down high Towers than to remove or scatter the vaporous Cloud about it Surely in all things I wonder at the subscribed sluggishness of the Schooles through a custom of assenting For Aristotle writes that the Salt of the Sea which notwithstanding he thought to be co-eternall with the World hath its originall from an exhalation he understood not an exhalation in the least because it is that which is volatile or swift of flight and the Salt of the Sea a fixed body for neither can Sea water otherwise sweet fix the volatility or swiftness of an exhalation any more than Sal Armoniac it self also all Metcors and especially windes yea the Earthquake and Comets whereof that of the year 1618 was a thousand times bigger than the Earth likewise small Stones Rocks great Stones he hath dedicated to exhalations alone A suitable Store-house whence so great exhalations should proceed hath been wanting to his Dreams And nevertheless the Schooles subscribe to those trifles nor do they awake out of their drowsie sleep but while Aristotle doth expresly spurn against the faith But Galen thinketh the winder or blast to be vapours lifted up out of the water and Lakes by the force of heat but now and then that it is an air resolved out of a mixt body But both of them he salth to be cold being likened to decrepite age to inbred heat failing and to cold effects surely he stumbling in all and every thing hath hugely spread his childish Dreams for truth For in the time of Galen the art of distilling was not yet made known who never saw Rose-water as neither Argentvive or Quick-silver For he had badly read Diascorides together with Pliny he writing that Quick-silver by reason of its great weight cannot be detained in Leather not in wooden Boxes but is to be kept onely in Cases of Mettall As if one onely ounce thereof should weigh more than an ounce of Lead Wherefore Galen must needs have been deeply and heartily ignorant of the
perfectly teach my own opinion not stablished by heathenish Dreams but confirmed by the Doctrine of a higher authority For first of all the Earth is actually distinguished by certain Pavements Soils or grounds for truly the outward Soil of the Earth is plainly Sandy Clayie white else-where clayie-yellow muddy grisely or grayie white yellow black red c. sporting with divers varieties Under which for the most part is a Sand and this very Sand differenced every where with great variety But under this Soil is at length the flinty Mountain which they call Keyberch being the Pavement and Originall of Rocks and first Root of Mineralls And at length every where under this Soil is the living or quick Sand the boyling Sand Drif or Quellem which is extended even into the Center of the World being thorowly washed in its un-interrupted joyning with waters And although all the aforesaid Soils do not every where succeed each other in order yet the Quellem is every where the last Pavement of the World although oftentimes immediately exposed to the Air and plain to be seen As concerning the Originall of Fountains in my Book of the Fountains of the Spaw This therefore being once supposed I say that the place where the exhalation should be which is believed to be the cause of the Earth-quake ought to be placed or appointed in some or amongst some of the said Soils seeing that in the Earth there is not a place out of the aforesaid Pavements But to the overthrowing of that Doctrine a demonstration is required which from a sufficient enumcration of the Pavements may shew that such an impossible exhalation cannot be contained or be raised up in any of the said Soils or if it should be there stirred up yet that it hath not the power of forming an Earth-quake As to the first of the three members to wit that not any exhalation can be contained under the Earth which may actively cause its trembling I prove First of all not under the outmost Clayie or first Soil of the Earth next to the Air and designed for the habitation of Mortalls because so S. Rumolds Tower had not trembled as neither Buildings built immediately upon the Quellem As neither had Ships without the raging of Windes been removed in deep Waters far from the ground of the Sand. For it being granted that the bottom of the Sea did tremble just even as the Earth else-where inhabited yet the Superficies of the Water could not keep the tenour of the same trembligg Sand without winde and storm which thing notwithstanding is discerned to be false for flying Birds also feeling the trembling of the Earth would not fall down they being as it were sore smitten or astonished for a sign that the Air it self doth tremble For the Elements shall at sometime melt in the sight of the Judge Therefore if the water doth tremble no lesse than the quiet Earth it self the cause thereof is signified to be in the Globe or because the Earth and water do at the same stroak of smiting together with the Air feel a fear or hand of the smiter Secondly neither can an exhalation the cause of an Earth-quake dwell in any of the Soils of Sands because then Fens Medows and places wherein the Quellem is immediately prostituted beneath the Clay had not trembled VVhich thing is as equally different from the truth of the deed as the former Next in the third place neither can the same exhalation be hidden under the Keyberch For in the whole Circle a few places excepted wherein the Earth then trembled at the same moment of time the ground Keyberch is not extant At length neither could an exhalation arise or be detained between the Quellem which is sufficient to shake so great an heap with an equall fury Because the Quellem that is oft-times next the Air and conjoyned even into the Center of the Universe by its continuall unity and thorow mixture of waters should easily puffe out such an exhalation before it could equally lift up so great an heap at once For it is of an unexcusable necessity because such an exhalalation should break forth out of the more weak lesse heavy and lesse resisting part that is in the place that is least ponderous And so under the position of the granted exhalation there could not be an alike trembling of all places which resisteth the thing done For before that the exhalation should lift up so great weights through so vast and various spaces of ground and waters at once and at one moment it had sought and had found out easie following and the more weak places through which it had made a way for it self to break out at For otherwise the exhalations should fight against the rules of nature proportion and motions which should lift up equally and at once all the parts of the Low-Countries and a great part of Germany Especially where there is not an equall capacity of every place wherein the exhalation should be entertained not an equall fardle of the incumbent burden or resistance of weight as neither is there an equall awakening of that exhalation possible to be that at once and almost at one onely moment it should alike act thorow so many Regions Which is to say that it is impossible that the exhalation the Mover of the Earth-quake being granted there should be an equality in the sameliness of time and power of motion through so great a space through so great a difference and resistance of the Soil and of the Heaven and diversity of weight seeing such an acting exhalation meating out its efficacy by the variety of places difference greatness activity swiftness of the Mover being of necessity unlike ought also to obey the unlikenesses of places Therefore let the quantity rise power entertainment and swiftness of exhalations be ridiculous which should at one and the same moment after a like manner and re-iterated course shake so many Cities Mountains Valleys Hills watry places Meadows Rivers Islands and so vast a heap longly and largely displaced and sooner than it should seek finde and make a passage for it self But now I coming to the second Member of proving to wit that in the aforesaid Pavements of the Earth the raising up of an exhalation is impossible which may be the cause of an Earth-quake Let every kinde of naturall vapour be determined and examined by its causes The exhalation which may be supposed to be the Mover of the Earth is not in the first place a vapour or watery exhalation because that most swiftly returns again into water daily by pressing together of its own accord in our Alembicks but an exhalation according to Aristotle that is chiefly necessary for these bounds is a hot and dry flux or Issue out of Bodies for the most part also Oylie lifted up from the dry parts by a sharp heat into the form of Air or a rising smoak But I could wish that the Schooles may answer what therefore at
how an exhalation may by its lightness make so great a heap of Earth and of huge weight to stumble sooner then to consult of coagulating And upon every event there should not be room but for one elevation of the Earth and one onely settling of the same after some gaping chap is found but not of stirring up a quaking trembling But let these Dreams be in watery places Meadows Clayie places pooles the Sea Rivers c. Therefore the absurdities which I granted before in jest I will now oppose in earnest First of all I demand what is that so unwonted heat which from the year 1580 even unto the year 1640 was not seen at Mecheline as neither an Earth-quake wherefore not every year wherefore in the 2d moneth called April under a most cold night when as the day before it had snowed much under the continuall North Winde and not under the Dog-Star Is it because the more inward parts of the Earth are then hot Why therefore not every year in the eleventh moneth called January But this Argument of the Antients ceaseth after that the Instrument meating out the Degrees of the encompassing Air is found For Wells and Caves are found all the year of an equall heat and cold Again why doth so great heat the stirrer up of exhalations cease so suddenly especially where it may stir up an exhalation the moover of so great an heap by what fewell it is kindled under the water by what Fodder doth it live and subsist by what Law is it not in the same place stifâ—ed by what priviledge doth it despise the respects of bodies places and weights at length by what Prerogative doth it stir up an exhalation of so great a vastness out of moyst Bodies without moyst vapours or if it doth also allure or draw out vapours after the ordinary manner why do not these mitigate a heat of so great moment do they extinguish do they choak together with their Sisters and forthwith following exhalations or what is that exhalation which shaketh the vast Tower of Mecheline with no greater respect than a low Cottage nor that respecteth any resistance of a huge weight or which doth in a like manner operate near at hand as at a distance or which doth at once every where and alike finde throughout its whole Superficies the collected power of its own Center that at once every where alike it may operate in one moment equally and alike strongly Why through the necessity of naturall causes is not the thred broken in the weaker part but all things do at once undergoe yea and sustain the same law of violence Surely if these things be rightly considered there is found in the Earth-quake a certain operative force of an infinite power which lifts up Mountains and Towers without respect of lightness or weight as if nothing were able to resist this moving virtue But I have proved that an exhalation if in any there be an efficient moving cause of an Earth-quake is neither of the race of Salts nor of Sulphurs as neither of Mercuries because that this is not an exhalation but the vapour of the watery parts Therefore it remains that it is not an exhalation but Gas it self not an eflux of Bodies stirred up by heat but rather an effect remaining after the fire To wit the Gas of the flame of the fire alone or of the smoak sprung from this But neither of these exhalations also can be the effective cause of an Earth-quake Therefore if none of these exhalations be the mover of the Earth there shall be none at all since another is not found and by consequence it is a vain fiction of the Schooles which they will have themselves to be believed in in the Earth-quake But if indeed they thinking of an escape do say that they do not understand an exhalation raised up by heat not brought forth by dryness but an unnamed vapour constituted by its causes To wit like as Aristotle writeth that all Rockie Stones small stones Mineralls and likewise the Salt of the Sea Comets although a hundred fold bigger than the Globe of the Earth and all Windes do proceed from some irregular and un-explained exhalations distinguishing the Windes therein against the Air This I say is to be willing to doat with Aristotle and to remain ignorant of naturall Philosophy with the same Aristotle Lastly it is an impertinent thing for them to have cited Aristotle and by his authority to be willing to defend their errours Notwithstanding I will treat against the Schooles by reason that seeing they do publish themselves to be so rationall they may deliver up their weapons to reason I say therefore that no exhalation can be more light simple or subtile than the Air because this is the simple body of an Element but that is a composed body and so however it be it hath in it a weighty body which the Air wanteth Yet the Air is not lighter than a Body that is without weight that is the Air is not lighter than it self nor can it lift up any thing besides it self unless by the motion of a Flatus or blast or of flowing that is by a Blas Which ceasing the body which it lifted up setleth From whence I conclude that the Air or Winde whether it be shut up or free cannot lift up the Earth by reason of its lightness alone unless it be by chance stricken by an externall and violent Mover but in this case the force of the exhalation ceaseth seeing it is a constraining force which moveth but not the exhalation it self Because it is that which in such a case is onely the mean or Instrument of motion but not the chief motive force And much lesse is that agreeable to an exhalation because it is that which is thicker and weightier than the Air as it containeth water I prove it by Handicraft-operation A Bladder stretched out with Air springs up out of the water not primarily because the Air is lighter than water but because the water is a heavy and fluide body and therefore it suffers not it self to be driven out of its place by a lighter body For indeed it is the first endeavour of the water to joyn it self to the water from whence it was seperated its secondary endeavour or that as it were by accident is to presse out by its falling together whatsoever is lighter than it self Therefore weightiness not lightness doth operate in this thing for the reason straightway to be shewed Let a Bladder able to contain three pounds or pints of water be put in a small trench or ditch and let it be covered with Earth Truly it shall not shake off from it half an ounce of the dust poured upon it Yea neither shall the Bladder desire to appear out of the dry more weighty Sand. Let it therefore be ridiculous that a Bladder weighing half an ounce doth ever from any lightness of Air of its own accord fly up into the Air. If therefore
signes times or seasons dayes and years Moreover I know that in the Sea and deep Lakes there is their motive force whereby they suffer a raging heat without windes whereby I say our Ocean is rowled six houres and else-where six constant months with one onely flowing Lastly I know that the Earth is at rest nor that it hath a motive force actively proper to it self Therefore I believe that the Earth doth quake and fear as oft as the Angel of the Lord doth smite it Behold a great Earth-quake was made for the Angel of the Lord descended from Heaven Mat. 28. The word For among the Hebrewes doth contain a cause as if he should say Because For this is the onely cause of an Earth-quake whereby all things do without resistance equally tremble together as it were a light Reed In the Revelations the third part of Mortalls Trees and Fishes perished at the very time wherein the Angel powred forth his Viall For abstracted spirits do work by the divine Power and nothing can resist them Evill spirits also as oft as it is granted them to act by a free power they act without the resistance of bodies or a re-acting of resistance For matter is the Client of or dependant on another Monarchy and it cannot re-act into a spirit which it by no meanes toucheth and with no object affecteth Even as the Angel useth the powred out liquor of the Viall unto the aforesaid slaughter so for the Earth-quake he for the most part makes use of a note or voice For a wandering note was heard in the Air no otherwise than as the creaking of Wheeles driven thereupon as it were a tempestuous murmuring sound succeeded yet without Winde and at that very time the whole tract of so great Provinces trembled at once with a huge horrour Which same note accompanied the trembling of the Earth at every of the three repeated turns The same thing almost happens in Lightning Truly the Lightning burns and causeth melting but surely it smiteth not According to that saying The voice of Thunder shall strike the Earth because it smiteth For Silk-worms die Milk is curdled Ale or Beer waxeth sowre a slain Oxe hanging up retains flaggie flesh unfit to take Salt and that onely by the Thunder-stroak the Lightning doing no hurt there Therefore let the voice of Thunder and the voice of the Earth-quake be the note or tone of ministring spirits But the Stars do not stir up a motive and alterative force of the Air or Water through a note but do act onely by an Aspect which they call an Influence And it hath its action and direction in a moment even as light sight c. For otherwise there should be need of many years before the audible Species or resemblances that are to be heard should come down from Saturn to the places of a Meteor And then a note or sound although it be great yet it faileth by degrees in the way But that the Earth doth tremble with a Tempest of Windes or that the Tempest doth sometimes run successively thorow Villages Cities and as it were thorow street by street in its wheeling about That is wholly by accident and according to the will of him who shaketh the Earth for a monstrous sign Likewise that else-where it doth oft-times tremble in quick Belgium very seldom that changeth not the moving cause For it stands in the free will of him who encloseth the Universe in his Fist who can shake the Earth at his pleasure and alone do marvellous things At the beholding of whom the Earth shall at sometime smoak and the Mountains being melted shall go to ruine But that in another place gapings chaps after an Earth-quake have sometimes appeared and a filthy poyson and fumes of arsenicall bodies have breathed forth that is joyned onely to its naturall causes Nor are they the effects of an Earth-quake but by accident but not the causes But this blindness of causes of the Earth-quake hath been invented the Devill being the Authour whereby mortall men might set apart all fear of the power and so might prevent if not wholly neglect the ends which God hath appointed to himself for the serious reverencing of the power of his Majesty that they being mind-full of the faults of their fore-led life might repent Deh qual possente man conforzze ignote Il terreno a crollar si spesso riede Non e chiuso vapor como altro crede Ne sognato stridente il suol percuote Certo la terra si rissente scuote Perche del peâ—cator sa aggrava il piede Et i nostri corpi impatiente chiede Per riemper se sue spelonche â—uote E linquaggio del ciel che l'huom riprende Il turbo il tuono il fulmine il baleno Hor parla anco la terra in note horrende Perche l'huom ch' esser vuol tutto terreno Ne del cielo il parlar straniero intende I l parlar della terra intenda al meno Behold with what a mighty yet unknown A force the Earthy Body makes a noyse And with so thick a rushing gives a groan 'T is not a vapour hot shut up they 'r toyes Even as some believe which beats the ground Or thumps its entrails with a whistling sound Truly the Earth it selfe doth feele and quake Because the sinners foot doth load its back And our impatient mortall bodies fall In to fill up its own deep Vaults withall The Language of the Heaven which reproves Man is the Whirle-winde Thunder Lightning flash And sp'ritous howling in the Air Ecchoes Now speaks the earth more-o're with horride lash Of signall tokens ' cause since man which would Be wholly earthly doth not understand The Linguo strange of Heaven yet may or should At least the Earth it 's Language apprehend These things nothing hindering there hath not been one wanting who said that from a most deep well of the Castle of Lovaine he by a sure presage foretold an Earth-quake was shortly to be because the water of the same Well three dayes before sent forth the stinking savour of Brimstone and that its contagion yellowness together with the turbulency of the water did bewray it But let that good man know that that Well is one hundred and fifteen foot in depth because they go up to the Castle from the Street that is next unto it by ninety three steps And so that Well in one part is not deeper than its Neighbouring Wells although in the other part where it is co-touching with the Hill of the Castle it is deep as I have said But seeing that a vein of Sulphur is not hidden in the Hill the water could not breath Sulphur which was not there But if it cast the smell of Sulphur a sign might precede God admonishing but it had not Sulphur which neither is in that place nor was enflamed therefore neither could it cause an Earthquake unto all Belgium or the Low Countries Therefore there is no naturall reason why the water
use of the Pulses and another of breathing and â—â—â—ther for heat only For in the most sharp and hot diseases to wit as oft as there is the greatest breathing drawn and that like a sigh the Pulse is small and swift also the strength remaining Therefore the use of breathing and the Pulse do not answer especially because we are more refreshed by a great draught of cold water abundantly drunk than if the same quantity be drunk at many times I say we are more refreshed by one only sigh than by many small and more frequent breathings Even so as a pair of Bellows doth perform more by a great and continual blast than by those that are lesse exact although many whence it may be sufficiently manifested to a well considerate and judicious man that there is another use of the Pulses of greater moment to wit That which respecteth the ferment of digestions Whence I repeat a handicraft operation to wit That at length under the last digestion all our Arterial bloud doth perish and exhale neither that it leaves any dreg behind it Yet whatsoever doth exhale by heat alone all that as well in living as in inanimate things doth leave a dreg behind it the skilfull do call this The dead Head which dreg being at length thus roasted doth resemble a Coale For the action of heat is of it self every where Simple Univocal and Homogeneal differing in the effect by reason of the Matter Therefore if the vitall bloud ought to be wholly so disposed in us that it be at length wholly blown away without a dead head it was altogether necessary that that should happen by some other Mean than that of heat But the aire was alwayes and from the beginning every where the seperater of the waters from the waters This hath not been known in the Schools to wit that the whole Venal bloud that it may depart into a Gas it hath need of two wings to fly the aire and a ferment Wherefore observe thou That as oft as any thing of bloud becomes unfit or is not by degrees disposed of and undergoes its degrees in the outward part of the body that it may wholly throughout the whole be made volatile and capable to flye away or thorow the poâ—es at the same moment now Scirthus's Nodes or Knots and Apostems are conceived but if that thing happen in the more inward part thereof for the most part Fevers Apoplexies Falling evills Asthma's likewise pains and deaths do soon follow Let us see therefore what the aire or what a ferment may conduce hereunto First of all Every muscilage of the earth which else is easily turned into worms likewise Starch Fleshes Fishes c. being once frozen at that very moment do lose their muckinesse and return into water As the aire was once very well combined to the Ice as I have sometimes spoken concerning the weight of Ice and so it is the first degree whereby the aire doth resolve a tough body into water And then under the greatest colds and purest aire we are more hungry yet we sweat and less is discussed out of us with a small and more hard siege or excrement Therefore one that saileth in the Sea eats more by double if not by treble unlesse he be sick and le ts go less excrement than himself doth living at Land whence is the Proverb The water causeth a promoting of digestion As if indeed he that saileth should not float in the aire but in the water but floating doth renew the aire in us and from hence there is a stronger digestion Therefore if we do eat more strongly and do cast forth less excrements it necessarily follows that the more is discussed or doth vanish out of the Body which is to say That the more pure Northern and Sea-aire doth conduce to a transpiration or evaporation of the body or doth dispose the bloud unto an insensible perspiration or breathing out of it self Surely for that cause is breathing made not indeed that the air may depart into nourishment for the vitall spirit but that it may be connexed with it being sucked to it thorow the Arterial Vein and Venal Artery of the Lungs and that the air being for this cause transported into the heart it may receive a ferment which accompanying it they both may dispose the venal blood into a totall transpiration of it self After another manner many things are made fixt and do resist a breathing forth if they are provoked by heat otherwise they were in themselves volatile Wherefore an Alcali is not generated in ashes by the fire essentially although effectively it proceed from thence For the office of the fire is indeed to kindle consume and seperate yet not to produce any thing Seeing the fire is not rich in a seed it is the very destroyer of seeds But from seeds all Generation proceedeth When therefore an Alcali is fixed out of a Salt that was before volatile it is not a new production of a thing but only the Alteration of a thing For the Alcali was indeed materially in the composed body before burning and did flow together with its Mercury and Sulphur Notwithstanding while the fire takes away the Mercury and Sulphur the Salt indeed as being a principle more subsisting in the melting of the combustion doth snatch to it self the neighbouring part of the Sulphur or Fat and when it is not able sufficiently to defend it from the torture of the fire it partly also flyes away under the mask of a Gas and attains the odour of corrupted matter and is partly incorporated in the laid-hold-of co-melted Sulphur and is made a true Coal Wherefore the Sulphur being now fixed by the wedlock of the Salt it doth not speedily incline from a Coal into a smoaky vapour But by degrees and not unlesse in an open Vessel and so with the former Sulphur for from hence the Sulphur of a thing being for the most part sharp doth retain the savour of a volatile Salt and at length with the Coalie Sulphur the just weight of its volatile Salt flies away Which thing surely is no where more manifest than in the Coal of Honey For if this be urged or forced by a shut vessel it remains not changed in a bright burning fire but the vessel being open both do so depart that moreover no remainder of ashes doth ever survive Therefore the Alcali Salt doth fore-exist materially in the composed body before combustion Because all the Salt was formally volatile in the composed body and not in the form of a more fixed Alcali which thing is now especially manifest in the bloud which being wholly volatile exhaleth unsensibly through the Pores without any residence But if it be combusted or burnt it leaveth very much fixed Salt in its own ashes In the next place The wood of the Pine-Tree which affordeth little ashes and less Salt in the preparation of ashes barrelled is by calcining wholly turned into an Alcali For barrelled ashes are brought
the proportion of the dregs and sharpness But red French Wines unless they shall keep their Lee and the which they therefore say is the Mother or Nurse they dissolve their own Tincture and drink it up together with their own sourness and therefore those of two years old become discoloured unless they are exceeding generous For truly the tincture of Wines is a certain separable Body But generous red Wines because they do more slowly wax sour or sharp they are kept for many years But those bearing a little white unless they are severed from the Lee they presently grow weak For the Lee being taken away when their sourish part doth not finde an object which it may dissolve the Wine remains in its own former State Therefore Tartar is no longer Wine or Lee but a neither thing constituted of them both But that the thing is on this wise it plainly appeareth because more Tartar is dissolved in ten ounces of Rain-water than in two hundred ounces of Wine however it be stirred by boyling To wit by reason of the sharpness of the Wine whereby the Tartar was coagulated Lastly six ounces of Salt of Tartar do dissolve seven ounces of crude Tartar because the Lixivium or lye of that Salt doth drink up the sharpness of the Tartar But that Tartar doth consist of the Lee of Wine and not of Wine onely Printers do prove who do prepare the Lee of Wine or Tartar to be a suitable Ink for them And both of these in distilling do belch forth altogether the like Odour and the like Oyl But Tartar is not dissolved in cold water because the Lee of the Wine doth so compass the Salt in the Tartar that cold water cannot the more fully dissolve it by piercing Therefore seeing the Nativity of Tartar doth not elsewhere consist than in winy juyces actually consisting of Spirit of Wine and lightly waxing soure by reason of the flight of the Spirit inward Let the Schools of Paracelsus from hence know how badly the Speculation of Tartar doth suit even with those Diseases for whose sake it was invented For truly our Stone is by no meanes solved in boyling waters because Tartar is rather to be reckoned among the number of Salts or juyces coagulated with Salt than among Stones CHAP. XXXI The rash invention of Tartar in Diseases 1. No Disease doth arise from Tartar 2. Galen is unsavoury about the matter of the Disease of the Stone 3. Galen was often deceived herein 4. He thought the Stone to be hardened in us by the Element of fire in the middle of the Vrine 5. Some ignorances of the same man 6. A neutral Judge is called for 7. The drowsiness of the Humorists unexcusable 8. An explaining of the thing granted 9. Paracelsus came nearer unto the nature of Stones 10. But he also slid in stumbling 11. Paracelsus recanteth 12. His rashness brake forth from the ambition of a Monarchy 13. Blockishness is the Companion of ambition 14. The nodding unconstancie of Paracelsus 15. He was deceived by the Metaphor of a Microcosme or little World 16. His hidden boasting 17. The like boldness of Aristotle 18. That the Metaphor of a Microcosme differs from the truth 19. Paracelsus hath not sufficiently trusted to his invention of Tartar 20. Two ignorances of the same man are demonstrated 21. The Rise of hereditary Diseases 22. The Schools have erred in both extreams 23. The Phylosophy of Paracelsus concerning Tartar is rustical or rude 24. His errour is proved 25. The incongruities of Paracelsus 26. Paracelsus was ignorant of a formal transmutation of things 27. He blockishly proceeds SEEING that Tartar hath first entred into Medicine for the consideration of the Stone I have finished a Treatise touching the Disease of the Stone and I have shewen in print that Tartar is a stranger unto the nature of the Disease of the Stone Now at length I will make manifest that plainly no Disease doth arise from Tartar but that the meditation thereof in Diseases is vain Galen had known a man to be grieved with Stones and Sands in his Reins and Bladder but he knew not to what cause he might ascribe so great a hardness in us at length I found that not any thing can be condensed or co-thickned except one onely excrement which I call muck or snivel but he names it Phlegm or a waterishness And when he discerned the Stone to grow in the remote and so in the ultimate Coasts of utterance and did think that nothing had access thither besides his own humours he boldly affirmed that the same thing doth happen in the Urine and therefore that the Stone cannot otherwise be constituted than from a watery Phlegm VVhich thing because he marked with the Element of water and watery properties therefore that it ought to grow together at the water-pipes in us The Invention smiled on him especially because a Stone being brought into the Bladder there was a continual voyding of muck together with Urine Therefore he thought that our fire because he believed it to be one of the four Elements which do concur unto the constitution of us was necessary for the hardening of the matter of the Stone and that the Phlegm should dry up even in the middle of the waters seeing he knew no other operators in nature besides heat and cold For he knew not that all things did at sometime arise out of nothing now at length that from a necessitated continuation in nature all things afterwards should flow forth from a certain Genealogy of Seeds but not that from a casual conflux of Elements and by the virtue of supervening heat and cold they are so fitly adorned with vital powers Neither considered he that those first qualities at the most and utmost could not generate or contribute any thing unto a new Being but onely occasionally to promote or fore-flow the vital dispositions of seeds in their own simplicity but not as the Elements should be combined Surely it grieveth me for his pains and that all posterity of sick folks doth hitherto pay the punishment of its own credulity because he never deservedly measured or of himself once desired the Causes of the Disease of the Stone as otherwise he ought before he erected a method of healing So his Soul is made the Chamber-maid of his own desires and he feigneth plausible reasons to himself according to the appetite of disturbance which removed it from its place to a consent of himself Therefore a strange Judge is called unto the Reasons found out by us least being credulous we worship our own fictions and love them as it were Sons and pledge for the same against equity as Parents Therefore let the fire the sieve of Reasons be that Judge But the art of the fire was not yet known in Galens time but it was hidden among privy Counsellers under an Oath in the silence of Pythagoras For Galen never law even the distillation of Roses Therefore in so great a want of knowledge his
the ground or doth lodge all night in marble in the sharpest blowing of the North wind he shall not be frozen or his joynts dâ—e together with himself whence it is not sufficient to have said A mad man feels not cold nor knowes that he is cold For truly a depriving or denying of knowledge or sense affords no real thing and much lesse doth it make hot or take away the forces from the cold that therefore it should cease to freeze the flesh For although a child in the Cradle doth not fear the plague nor knowes that it is present the plague hath not therefore lost its right over him Therefore there is some kind of power which overcomes Colds neither doth it submit to a sublunary tempest And hence it is chiefly manifest that the mind in us is immortal and not capable of suffering Indeed the mind it self marking that the sensitive soul doth not govern man according to the requirance of our Species doth as it were out of compassion toward a guiltlesse blindnesse by its own virtue wherein it is superiour to the Elements issue forth an unsensible beam which deprives the body of a mad man of the mortal importunity of cold Furthermore seeing all madnesse doth arise from a budding or flourishing conceptual forreign Idea implanted into anothers ground and that all this speculation is directed unto soâ—e profitable end and not onely to curiosity or ostentation I have considered also that a mad Idea to wit already imprinted on the radical principles of life and so also hence to be propagated into families cannot be taken away together with the Subject which hath cloathed it Therefore a remedy was to be found out which might slay kill take away or obliterate that aforesaid image of madness or the blot now charactarized no otherwise than as a blemish imprinted on the young by the moving of the hand of a dead carcasse on it which was killed by a long consumption stripped of every property of life until the cold shall pierce the blemished part which is done in the space of one miserere doth for the future vanish away of its own accord After the same manner also that the Idea of madness ought to perish the immediate subject wherein it doth inhere being in the mean time safe Whether that be done by introducing a death of the Idea or by in-generating an Idea of equal prevalency or one that over-powreth the foolish Idea For from hence it comes to passe that a remedy for madness hath been hitherto despaired of because none hath hitherto carried up the nature and properties of madness above the distemper of the first qualities yea Paracelsus himself otherwise injurious against heats and colds hath enslaved madnesse wholly unto heat and blood-letting and hath therein rendered himself ridiculous I confess the scope of curing hath seemed difficult because not onely the Idea of a corrupted imagination and a sealie mark and blemish is introduced into and imprinted on the innermost point of the understanding but also because the restoring of the in-bred spirit is accounted plainly impossible Indeed a wished aid of Secrets hath been implored but the progress hereof hath been slow because a stubborn enemy did resist within But medicines have been administred wherein a symbole or mark of resemblance doth inhabit that is the fermental imagination of a sounder judgment For truly as there are poisons of the mind causing alienation for a space or for the whole life-time to wit which do introduce a proper phanâ—â—sie into us as a mad dog the Tarantula c. So also there are in Simples their own fruits of the knowledge of good and evil in their first face indeed poisonous under which notwithstanding the more rich treasures and renewings of the faculties of the mind are kept But seeing it is not safe to cast those remedies on common Physitians by reason of the manifold abuse of the wits of this age Lastly seeing neither is it fit or meet for every one to go to Corinth therefore in another way which is of the mortifying of foolish Images have I thought meet in this place to proceed But some Histories have confirmed in me the consideration conceived the which as those that are to be imitated I will here rehearse There is a Castle scituated by the Sea-â—â—le four leagues distant from Gandt which they call Cataracta I saw a Ship swimming beyond it and therein an old man naked bound with cords having a weight on his feet under his arm-pits he was encompassed with a girdle wherewith he was bound to the Sail-yard I asked what they meant by that spectacle One of the Marriners said that old man was now Hydrophobial or had the Disease causing the fear of water and to have been lately bitten by a mad dog I asked toward what part of the Sea would they carry him did they intend his death Nay rather saith the Marriner he shall presently return whole And such is the blessing of the Sea that such a kind of madness it would presently cure I offered them an earnest-penny to take me along with them as a companion and witnesse Therefore we had sailed about the space of an Italian mile when as the Marriners did open a hole in the bottom whereby the whole Ship was almost sunk even to the brim Indeed they used that brine to recoct Spanish salt And when as that hole was now again exactly shut two men withdrawing the end of the Sail-yard lifted up the top thereof and bare the old man on high but thence they let him down headlong into the Sea and he was under the water about the space of a Miserere whom afterwards they twice more plunged about the space of an Angelical Salutation But then they placed him on a smooth Vessel with his back upwards covered with a short cloak I did think that he was dead but the Marriner derided my fear For his bonds being loosed he began to cast up all the brine which he had breathed in and presently revived He was a Cooper of Gandt who being thenceforth freed from his madnesse lived safe and sound From hence as our soul is a Chamber-maid to find out reasons before unknown I presently understood the Idea of the madnesse and the mark of the imprinted poison to be like as is a mortified blemish in the Young For I knew that warts and likewise ulcers and forreign future and strange poisons lighting on the first constitution were separable the vital root of the Individual remaining Also the Marriner did relate that the Dutch by a raw herring salted for three dayes space renewed and applied to the biting of a mad dog do take away all fear of madnesse But where negligence had hindered that thing at least that by the beheld manner of plunging they are all cured For they who abhor water it s no wonder if they are cured by water Afterwards it remained deeply imprinted in my mind perswading my self that that would not be
now what he would in times past it is not our part to aske of God a reason of his own will therefore it is a foolish Argument God doth not now do what he did in times past therefore he cannot do it The Hebrew people was a small people out of whom Christ ought to arise and that people were on every side beset with Enemies and the which unless they had been supported with the stretched-out Arme of God and as it were by a continual miracle they being presently brought to nothing had yielded as a prey to the Conqueror from whence notwithstanding it was decreed that the Messias should arise But the condition and Law of Christians is far otherwise For the Israelitish people in the hardness of their hearts did measure the grace or favour of God by the abounding of Wealth Of-spring Fruitfulness of Fruits and their peaceable Possession But we have known that offences should be necessary in the Church Tribulations also how great soever yet not worthy to be reckoned with the Expectations of the Age to come And likewise it hath so pleased God that for unjustice Kingdoms are translated from Nation to Nation But that I may shew that there is the same God of the Christians which there was in times past to the Hebrews I must not indeed run back unto the written Chronicles with which Atheists the Bibles themselves are of no credit the Argument of Atheists is to be overthrown Seeing their understanding admits not of that which is not introduced outwardly by the Senses Their whole Faith is from a knowledge but that knowledge is founded in a present Sensibility a fore-past Observation renouncing of Histories and succession of Ages for otherwise there ought to be no less Authority of sacred than of profane Writers Yea all the knowledge of Atheists descends to the Eyes to Sight Numbers Lines Figures Tones or Sounds Weights Motions Smells Touchings Handlings and Tasts that is it wholly depends on a brutal Beginning and they are unapt to understand those things which do exceed sense For that is the cause why they exclude themselves from the intelligible world and do kick against the corner Stone But at leastwise they confess that they do see and know those things which they are ignorant of which thing happens in the Speculations of the Planets But I wish that Atheists may measure the compass of the World I say the real distance of Saturn from us for they shall confess for that very cause even against their wills the distance of so many thousand Miles which their understanding it self will contradict by seen dimensions or they shall of necessity incline themselves to confess that a three-fold circuite of Saturne in respect of his own Diameter could not have arisen from himself or of his own accord but rather that there is some Author of these of infinite power wisdome greatness and so also of Duration c. But if the Atheist doth think that the Orbs of so incomprehensible greatness and so regular a constancy of successive changes have been thus of their own accord from everlasting at least wise the perpetuity of that infinite Eternity ought to follow a certain Law Order and ordained Government which did require a certain presiding or overseeing or ruling Being everlasting in continuance great and powerful Most miserable therefore are they who by an utter denial of all things do exclude Faith and the rewards of Faith For let us consider the Circle of the Earth to be cloathed with waters or that place without Earth and water to wit that all things do of their very own forceable Inclination fall towards their Center So that if two men were there to wit from East and West these should touch each other with their Feet and should look upwards with their head even as we and the Antipodes at this day This I say the Atheist doth believe although sense hath not suggested it unto him For weighty bodies do teach indeed their own ready Inclination of falling downwards but that the Heaven is on every side aboue in respect of one Center and that such is the property of this Center that there is not another like unto it neither yet hath the Atheist seen that property but nevertheless he believes it yea whatsoever he may at any time frame he alwayes finds the contrary and without that property of a Center he believes I say that same one only natural property in the universal Center but he never beholds or looks into the working cause thereof or that which is like it in the least and he had rather through unbelief exclude it from himself But at least if there be not a God nor he every where present and giving all things to all it should be all one if all things were confounded should fall upwards or downwards whether weighty Bodies did rush downwards or upwards whether Plants and Beasts did perish or not Therefore the constancy of order perseverance of the Species or particular kinds do of necessity require some primitive Fountainous Being from whence they began are and do propagate by a continual thred and the which doth govern all things at his own pleasure or by his own beck and gives a constancy and Succession of Continuation least all things should go to ruine and be confusedly Co-mingled Indeed he beares a universal care and keeps things in their essence or being In the next place let the Atheist consider the flowing and ebbing of the Water To wit that no water doth ascend of its own accord yet that the water of the Sea doth alwayes ascend as well in the flowing as ebbing of the Sea He believes this because he sees it but the cause thereof he believes not because he seeth it not neither hath the knowledge thereof entred by sense because it is that which contradicteth his senses But he at least ought to believe that those things do happen by a cause although he hath not known the same by which notwithstanding every thing hath drawn such a property For although all particular kinds should have this kind of power of seeds and gifts from everlasting yet nevertheless there is not a certain universal property in the Universe which may have respect unto all particular things that they may be ordained and which may know all particular things newly risen and to arise unless it be out of and besides the nature of all particular things Otherwise there should be innumerable Deities as there were in times past and moreover there should be continual Divisions and Dissolutions of the species or particular kinds For the Atheist denies to believe what things he knows not by sense he sees indeed the water to be moist but he knows not what that is which is moist in the water or why it is moist Therefore he believes that which he doth not know and that which he doth not pierce that is as the Beast doth for neither shall Humane knowledge ever raise him up
that Nature cannot pierce unto a dividing where there is no knot or diversity of kind I admit indeed that Mercury through a composition of transmutation 〈◊〉 a marrying of the Sulphurs of Mettals becomes a Mettal and that this is destroyaâ—â—e by reason of the doubleness of its Sulphur notwithstanding the Mercury of that Mettal remains undestroyable Hence Paracelsus in the aforesaid Vexation Although thou shalt destroy a Mettal ten thousand times yet it shall alwayes rise again the far more perfect by its destructions And in his Archidoxals in the Book of the separation of Elements in the Chap. of Mettals Every one of the Elements in the shew of the Oyle of a mettallick destruction may be again reduced into its former white and malleable Mettal except the Element of fire which containeth the Tincture or Sulphur Therefore although the Mercurial part in Mettals and so also in the Body of Mercury it self doth by reason of adjuncts receive the masks of Vitriol Oyle Salt or Water they are nothing but the jugglings of the eyes Because it alwayes returns Mercury from thence because it is alwayes therein according to its Nature and all its Properties Therefore I hold with the Principles of the more abstruse or hidden Philosophy if Mercury should be divideable into Heterogeneal parts the Art of Chymistry should not be true and the Mercury it self should be unfit for work or operation For unless I had seen Mercury so subsisting I should deny the Art to be true For Nature cannot destroy the Seed which cannot dye nor be separated from its own matter Neither can it dye through the sublunary engines of this World Likewise it is more easie to frame or make Gold than to destroy it So also it is easier for Nature to compose Mercury than to destroy it As many therefore as do promise the separations of Gold or Mercury and yet do not know how to make or compose Gold in a wealthy quantity seeing they know not that which is far more easie let them believe also that they do not know that which is as yet far more difficult Therefore Bacon inquiring into the first matter of the Art and running thorow all the Bodies of the World denies Gold and Silver to be the matter of the Art because the reducement of the same into Sulphur and Argent vive is plainly impossible from whence the Son of the fire so much in love of the Philosophers is made Lastly unto the third I say That those things which are not subject unto death separation or change are at least wise subject or lyable to a term or end I grant that to be true if we understand it of the dissolution of the World and the fire of Hell in the finishing of the World of which I have nothing to say Otherwise the aforesaid affirmation contains an idiotism For a term or bound doth naturally operate nothing but the operation is finished by the agent in the very term or bound unto which But such an agent faileth about undissolveable things In the next place neither time nor duration doth operate any thing by it self but only the middle dispositions of moveable things happening in time do operate Therefore whatsoever doth not hearken to the dispositions of changeable things much less doth it hearken unto time or term of continuance which term is included in changeable things only but not in things unchangeable If now metallick Mercury the most noble I say of Bodies of the most constant union doth wholly want all Sulphur it is lawful to consider this Law of the three first things to have failed like a broken chain Therefore that other Bodies are not the three first things but altogether one only material beginning readily serving for the divers appointments ends scopes and necessities of Seeds and playing various supposionalities or supposed parts Those three things therefore are not the first things where they are found but are made by the dissolving of the fire and their matter is not espoused according to a principiating of Salt Sulphur and Mercury but according to the ends of Seeds Neither indeed are they beginnings but subordinate means to the last life In the next place I know that out of sand flints and stones that are not limy Sulphur or Mercury can never be drawn For their Seeds were content with a stonyfying coagulation of water without an appointment of fatnesses or Mercuries But stones which may be calcined do attain the nature of salt and tartness of lime But that very thing is a transchanging into a new Generation promoted by the fire but not an extraction drawing forth or separation of the thing contained Which thing the Chymical School before me hath been ignorant of The which I prove Because I have known how to reduce a great or rocky stone and all stones into a meer salt of equal weight with its own great or small stone wholly without all Sulphur or Mercury and so whatsoever is lost in burning of a rocky stone let it be rather that of salt than of three things But because that unity of the composed body doth respect a way unto its first reducement into the Element of water neither is the operation obvious to every one therefore we have been wont by a general way of speaking among Chymists to speak of things under the name of the three things to wit of Salt Sulphur and Mercury Not indeed that I think those to be the principles of things but because they are separated by the fire out of most things we use their Etymology to distinguish the diversity of kinds of composed Bodies The same thing happens to a stone which befals a coal for unless both are burnt in an open fire they are never changed into lime or ashes And although a coal doth by a fan or stirrer up yeeld a flame and thus far whatsoever perisheth of a coal is of Sulphur yet seeing nothing is enflamed or enlightened in a stone let it belong rather to Salt than to Sulphur Therefore while a small stone gemme great stone or sand are artificially reduced into a Salt that Salt by reason of the every way Homogeniety of it self which is left it by the fire cannot send forth or contain a Sulphur or be drawn into divers parts In the next place if glass be made by the fire of ashes and sand there is not an extraction of glass out of ashes but a fabrick and new generation of artificial skill For all Bodies seeing they derive their matter immediately from the Element of water being espoused by vertue of the Seeds truly let the Sulphur be the act of the Seed but the salt is bred in the composed body from a voluntary inclination of the Water yet being changed by the disposition of the Seminal Sulphur Those two beings therefore do immediately proceed from the two Principles of Bodies but the Mercury of things is nothing but meer Water not as yet sufficiently ripened by the disposition of the Seed
are from within drawn out of the Body the which I will enclose in one only or two Examples The Wife of a Taylor of Mecheline saw before her Door a Souldier to loose his Hand in a Combate she being presently smitten with horrour brought forth a Daughter with one Hand but dead through an unfortunate and bloody Arm because the Hand thereof was not found and a flux of Blood did kill the Infant The Wife of Marcus of Vogelar a Merchant of Antwerp in the year 1602 seeing a Souldier begging whose right Arm an Iron Bullet had taken away in the Siege of Ostend and who as yet carried that Arm about with him bloody by and by after she brought forth a Daughter deprived of an Arm and that indeed her right one the Shoulder whereof being as yet bloody ought to be made whole by the Chyrurgion she married a Merchant of Amsterdam whose name was Hoocheamer she also surviving in the year 1638 But her right Arm was no where to be found nor its Bones neither appeared there any putrifying Disease for which the Arm had withered away in a small hours space Yet while the Souldier was not as yet beheld the Young had two Arms Neither could the Arm that was rent off be annihilated Therefore the Arm was taken away the Womb being shut but who plucked it off naturally and which way it was taken away surely trivial reasons do not square in so great a Wonder or Paradox I am not he that will shew these things only these things I will say that the Arm was not taken away as neither rent off by Satan And then that it was a thing of less labour for the Arm being rent off to be derived else where than it was to have plucked off the Arm from the whole Body without Death A Merchants Wife known to us assoon as she heard that 13 were to beheaded in one morning it happened at Antwerp in the time of Duke Alban or D'â—lue and Women great with Child are led by inordinate Appeties she determined to behold the beheadings Therefore she went up into the Chamber of a Widow her familiar acquaintance dwelling in the Market place and the spectacl being seen a travaile pain presently surprized her and she brought forth a mature Infant with a bloody Neck whose Head no where appeared At leastwise I do not find that mans Nature doth abominate the piercing of dimensions seeing it is most frequent to the Seeds of things Thou shalt bring forth Children in Sorrow is the punishment of Sin Before Sin therefore she had naturally brought forth tall Young without pain at least-wise of that bigness with which we are now born But not that a Woman had been unsensible before Sin but because it had gone forth the Womb being shut Therefore it was a proper or familiar thing to humane Nature from his Creation for dimensions to pierce each other because he was made that he might live in the Flesh according to the Spirit But Nature being corrupted that authority of his Spirit over his Body perished and therefore Woman doth thence-forward bring forth after the manner of Bruits Yea Writers do make mention that Ulcers or Imposthumes are made thorow the Bones that all things are carried upwards and downwards without the guidance or commerce of the Vessels Indeed that primitive efficacy of piercing Bodies doth as yet consist in the seeds of things but is not subjected by humane force art or will or judgment For there are many Bodies much more ponderous than the Matter from whence they are composed It must needs be I say that more than fifteen parts of Water do co-pitch into one that one only part of Gold may be thereby made for weight is not made of nothing but doth prove a matter weighing in an equal tenour Therefore Water doth naturally as often pierce its own Body as Gold doth exceed Water in weight Therefore a home-bred and dayly progress of Seeds in generations requireth a Body to penetrate it self by a co-thickning the which is altogether impossible for an Artificer to do Let us grant pores to be in the Water yet these cannot contain fourteen times as much of its entire quantity It is therefore an ordinary thing in Nature that some parts of the Water do pierce themselves into one only place And the Seeds do act this by virtue of a certain Spirit the Archeus For although the Archeus himself as well in the aforesaid Seeds as in us be corporeal yet while he acts by an action of government and sups up the matter into himself he utters many effects not unlike unto enchantments because in speaking properly the Archeus doth not imitate enchantments but enchantments do follow the rule prescribed by the Archeus to wit as he doth operate far otherwise than Bodies do on each other As in affects of the Womb the Sinewes are voluntarily extended the Tendons do burst forth out of their place and do again leap back the Bones likewise are displaced by no visible mover the Neck riseth swollen unto the height of the Chin the Lungs are stopped up from air unthought of Poysons are engengred and the venal Blood masks it self with the unwonted countenances of Filths But as to what doth belong unto the penetrations of Bodies our Archeus sups up Bodies into himself that they may be made as it were Spirits For example Aqua-Fortis doth by its Spirit make Brass Iron or Silver remaining in their own Nature thick or dark so transparent that they cannot be seen and doth transport a mettal thorow merchant Paper the which otherwise doth not transmit the finest Powder thorow it it as yet essentially remaining in the shape of a mettal but not that the similitude of the piercing of dimensions doth uniformly square with the Example of a Mettal proposed Because as I have said reasons do not suite with so great a Paradox where I do willingly acknowledge the manner to be undemonstrable from a former Cause Even as no Man can know after what sort an Idea imprinted on Seeds may figure direct and dispose of its own constituted Bodies And therefore we will search after the same from the effect First of all let it be supposed that the Devil hath no authority or command over us against our will unless by the peculiar permission of God For know ye not that we are the Temple of God and that the very Kingdom of God dwelleth in us which thing is to be re-furrowed from its original First therefore it is of Faith that we are the sanctuary of the holy Spirit that the holy sacred Trinity doth make its mansion with the Just That the delights of God are with the Sons of Men unto whom he hath given Power to become the Sons of God but Children being Baptized are innocent just of them is the Kingdom of God the fitted Temple of God Yet Children are killed by enchantments sooner than others Therefore it must needs be that that thing happens from some
it is certain That the Heaven hath received no other Law since Transgression because the Earth alone hath undertaken all the Curse on it self For from hence I have sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere That the Heaven is free from our sins neither that it playes the part of a revenger of iniquities But if some places are subject unto Death and certain Diseases that is not to be attributed unto the circulation or whirling of the Heavens blind influxes of the Stars But it is altogether proper unto the dispositions of the Earth For although Eastern Provinces may seem the more fruitful or happy that is not to be attributed to the Heaven Seeing that in a circle every part subjected under the same circle is alike Oriental or Easterly Otherwise a Circle should not want a Beginning End and Extremity of parts Therefore there is an inbred goodness in the soil and the fertility of the ground is holpen by the continual cherishment of the Stars and a perpetual familiarity of visitation Truly under the circle of the Sun Climates have an ordinary and equal heat and so that as many fruits as by ripening do ascend unto a degree of perfection by reason of heat are there more happy the which otherwise through want of heat are not alike perfect But the heat of the Sun hath respect unto Fruits but not to Long Life which is of no less length of continuance in Cold Mountanous and Northern places than else where under the Hot or Torrid Zone Surely the favours of the Soyl do not depend on the Stars as neither the prolongations of Life The Stars are daily wheeled about and do daily almost equally affect the Climates of the Earth which are under them but they do every Year receive their Winter and Summer according to the access and recess of the Sun In the mean time the Tracts of the more adjoyning Lands do far vary from each other They are therefore the particular gifts of the Soyl but not of the Heaven which therefore keep a stable goodness as it were Provincial to the same Tracts of Land In the holy Scriptures indeed The Land of Promise floweth with Milk and Honey being fruitful in Wine Corn Pulse and rich fruits of the Tree And likewise scarce requiring dunging and the toyles of Labour And then I see other Coasts of the World to owe and pay the Tribute of the Land of Promise For from both the Poles continual Rains do steep the Earth that the promised Soyl may without the trouble of Rains take unto it self its due Water and that Aegypt may repay the favours of the Soyl of Heaven with a double usury of fruits For Seas and Rivers strivingly hasten unto those places with a speedy course Yea and from beyond the Tropick of Capricorne Nilus brings down his melted Snows through Aegypt unto the Mediterranean Sea as it were a Yearly Tribute of Nature that may water the more fruitful Countries if not with Rain at leastwise with Dew and the blackish cloudy Waters of Nile and that the Vapours being lifted up from the Sea throughout the Soyl it may most plentifully repay a plentiful Dew round about And so that the whole World seemeth readily to serve those more fruitful Regions Under the Aequinoctial Line it Rains many times every Day because the Tributary Waters do not reach thither But they are supped up in the Countries which God in times past appointed unto his own People but now unto Barbarians by reason of Transgressions fore-monished of by the Prophets He therefore blessed the Land of Promise for the People of Israel from the beginning but for Reasons foreknown to himself from Eternity and the which he fixed stable into Nature Yea he not onely appointed the Tribute of the whole World unto these Lands but unto most of them he added Reasons Idea's Seeds and Gifts whereof the more intemperate Climate are destitute Nor all that for any other ends than because it so well pleased him for his hidden Judgements But these things do not make for the consideration of long Life for in Is-land Men are found to be of a Longer Continuance of Life than in Palestina Phaenicia Aegypt c. Oftentimes also in Mountainous and rough Hills Older Men are met withal than in a pleasant Champion To wit that we may know that the Prince of Life hath granted a long continuance of Life unto so miserable places and to a singular tract of Land which he hath denied unto whatsoever the most pleasant and wealthy Countries Nature therefore is subject unto the Soyl even for a stability of Life For we measure a Diseasie and short Life from Endemicks Doth happily an Endemical Being breath out of the Lands wherein Life is prolonged No surely And it is sufficient that a place doth want malignity that a continuance of Life may be attained so far as is from the nature of the Place Lastly Fountains are either without Savour or Mineral they not being those which may have positively a long continuance of Life But as being those which unsensibly mow down the daily Superfluities or growths of oily Dregs and in this respect Life is not untimely taken away by and by Neither also doth much and a sweet temperature of Air prevail hereunto For truly in the rough Hills of the Forrest of Arden of Scotland and Spain in our Champion a longer Life doth for the most part occur than in Aquitane For Hieres is a Valley nigh Apulia environed with Mountaines being fruitful in the sweetest Fruits where the most sweet Station of the Spring is almost continued Yet having Inhabitants of a shorter Life being deformed with a pale Countenance so that it hath crept into a Proverb of those that were Sick and Recovering Thou seemest to us to be a Stranger come from Hieres For the pleasantnesse of Fruits takes up the suspition of a Mineral Endemick Also not onely Mountainous Colds do extend the Life but Old Age is frequent among the Aethiopians Let therefore those places be fit for Long Life which being not polluted by any Endemicks have moreover not unwholsome Waters nor the which are infamous for a stormy Wind. CHAP. CIV The Radical Moisture THe Schooles with one Voice promote the Radical Moysture of Life For they declame That from it and in it we live and that that onely being consumed we die For they who together with Aristotle attribute all things to heat as to an active Principle do not say That the Radical moisture is the Beginning as neither the Inn of Life unless they derive the Primateship on Heat in the moisture But the moisture hath more pleased others From whence they being sore afraid through the sloath of a diligent search least they should erre they will have our Life to depend on and be prolonged as well by moisture as by heat without distinction And so they denominate it not indeed heat but composedly Radical heat or the first-born moisture That indeed the first-born or original
Moreover it is without controversie in the Church of God that the Cedar in Libanus in the Temple in the Figure of the Ark in the cleansing of the Leprosie and in the feast of the building of Tabernacles did represent the Mother of God the Virgin Queen of Heaven an incorruptible Vessel a Tree which brought forth for us Eternal Life in the Flesh the Patroness I say of the Poor and Mine But the place of the Cedar in Libanus exceeding the coldest folding door of the Air covered with Snowes denotes the unspotted Integrity of the God-bearing Virgin And so if the Tree denotes the holy Virgin especially conjoyntly with so many mysteries it s no wonder that the Cedar doth signifie the Tree of this Life also in the world For indeed there was in the dayes of David an aged Cedar in Libanus because it was that which by reason of its excellent taleness was from that time worthy of a mystical sense Wherefore either it being there planted after the Floud doth as yet hitherto continue the same in number safe or a good while before and perhaps from the cradles of the World according to the Vision of the Dream Which thing after what manner soever it may be taken at least-wise it shews that the Cedar despiseth the discommodities of Old Age But he is not from a Cedar his Parent planted after the Floud because that Parent also of the Cedar was preserved under the Deluge and much more easily afterwards than that which remains from the daies of David even until this time Let those laugh that will at that age of the Cedar in Libanus and let them say that Modern ones were raised up by a new Branch or by Seed falling down But that being supposed at this day also new ones had dayly come forth into a great Wood where notwithstanding no new Cedar growes But moreover from thence I gather that the same Cedar in number doth now persist which was even before the Floud yea even from the Creation of the World Because it was given for a Mark of resemblance to the blessed Virgin But moreover for our Magistery the Fruit of the Cedar is not to be taken for that the end thereof is not for a simple Being in the appointment of the Properties of the Cedar but only for a propagation of the Species which contradicteth long Life from the Foundation The Wood Cetim it self therefore is to be taken which is so much exalted in the holy Scripture Therefore not the Bark not the Fruit not the Root nor the Leaves are the ultimate end whither Nature hath had respect for long Life And so that the Cedar perhaps also is herein distinct from the Tree of Life in Eden A matter therefore of a Tree which knowes not how to die is found whose unputrifiable Wood and by reason of its many Properties being in a mystical Sense designed to the holy Virgin is that which brings forth Life to the World that it may redeem Death But the preparation thereof is the most exceeding difficult of all those things which fall under the Labour of Wisdom For this Cause indeed Monarchs want a long Life because there is none which hath known how to prepare it For none who is truly a Phylosopher is a Minstrel neither doth he follow Princes and flatter them for because he stands in need of nothing he despiseth whatsoever a Prince can give The Tree of Life therefore alone refresheth the decayed Faculties and for some time detaineth the Life in its flowing But the difficulty of preparing it consisteth in this that the Wood ought to be resolved without a dissolution of its Faculties by a luke-warmth such as is that of the Sun in March even unto its first Being In which Being only is granted unto it a fermental Power of preserving and seasoning with an ingress unto the first constitutives of us and of insinuaring it self into the familiarity of the Spirits implanted throughout all the Organs But there is in the Juice of this kind of resolving the entire Virtue of the Cedar to wit a vital one together with every seminal and formal Property of long Life For the whole lump of the Wood is dissolved into a Juice which being otherwise distilled is transchanged and made a certain new Creature the which Aqua Vitae being distilled out of Graines or Ales doth also prove likewise the Oyl that is distilled out of Woods yea out of the very Oyl of Olives it self The practise thereof is this Resolve the pieces of the Wood Cetim with a like weight of the Liquor Alkahest in a sealed Glass under a nourishing luke-warmth and within seven dayes thou shalt see the whole Wood to have passed over into a milky Liquor But presently about the fifteenth day a twofold Oyl distinctly swims a top the which is increased even for a Month and is more clearly separated But then let the Oyl be separated from the Water by manual Operation Then distil thou the Water in a Bath and the Liquor Alkahest remains in the bottom in its own original weight but let the Oyl be nourished with the Water for full three months space with a slow luke-warmth and the whole Oyl assumes the Nature of a Salt and shall thorowly mingle it self with the Water and it is the first Being of the Cedar But as yet a few things concerning the length of Life because I being an old Man do pursue these things and I my self am about to die My Mind breathed some unheard of thing within but I as unprofitable for this Life shall be buried Because the Spirit the Porter withdrew the Bottle by the command of him before whom the whole World is as a Mushrom Let the praise be to him who hath given and who hath taken away that which was his own The Schools therefore may deservedly upbraid me Thou miserable Man a Man of small note a Man of great ambition an old Man hast paradoxally come to late that with thy Song in the commendation of Cedar thou shouldst over-spread the World with mists The Histories and Virtues of Plants are known to our Herbarists But thou that thou maiest vaunt of an unheard of devise concerning long Life as a Paradoxal Man proceedest to be mad with thy Cedar Go to if there be so great Power in the Cedar for Life why are not all Kings long-lived From whence dost thou as a new guest come produce thy Learning and experience whereby thou wilt be believed For as a Lawier blusheth to speak without Law so doth a Physitian without Experience For thou canst not deny but that the decoctions of the Leaves Kernels Wood Bark Root or Rosin of Cedar had long since produced a continued Life But nothing of these things is manifest by our Herbarists Thou there fore dost deter or fright us away through an hidden manner of preparation and by a crabbed Style of a smoak-selling Art desirest to involve a feigned mistery of Cedar Which thing the Alkahestical
although I knew mans urine to be onely in our species and that the spirit of mans urine alone was in the possession of man Yet I examined Horse-pisse in the name of the bigger Cattel as being carefull whether perhaps there might not be another like coagulating spirit which by reason of Impediments co-bred with it could not every where obtain the command of coagulating But however I laboured I found not that spirit the Coagulater in Horse-pisse As neither the spirit of a ferment or of Aqua vitae Therefore I found a potential Aqua vitae intimate with mans urine and that a pliable one between that spirit the Coagulater and the putrified spirit the Receiver of the aforesaid Runnet or Coagulum And it is chiefly to be noted that the spirit of urine doth not coagulate but by the Wedlock of Aqua vitae the which I have often approved by distilling There are therefore three things in the urine of man which must of necessity concur and by so much the more powerfully by how much every person troubled with the stone doth now bear no light or small principle of corruption in his urine as presently in its place from whence indeed a ferment is swiftly stirred up in the urine for the aforesaid Aqua vitae that is capable of Coagulation For neither doth it withstand these things that as well the spirit of Life as the Aqua vitae it self are exceeding swift of flight and so scarce fit for the stubbornnesse of Duelech for it is certain that the spirit of Vitriol doth most swiftly flye from its volatile Companion yea and that it is presently fixed by the swift Sal Armoniack So that it undergoes a fusion or liquidnesse of substance whereby our followers being perfectly instructed do presently cease to wonder which things otherwise affect the ignorant with amazement CHAP. IV. A processe of Duelech 1. The manner of making Duelech 2. It is a singular Being nor having its like 3. A mechanick or handicraft Operation of the Fountaines of the Spaw 4. Oker in the Fountaines of the Spaw might have scared Paracelsus from his device of Tartar 5. A dissection in the actions of Spirits 6. The Fire-water that hath not an homogeneal Being like unto its self 7. The difference of the aforesaid dissolving liquor with all others of the whole Universe 8. Some Oyl of Gold is of a Pomegranate or light-red colour 10. What the generation of Duelech may bespeak 11. The action of Bodyes on Bodyes of what sort it is 12. The Doctrine concerning the action of Bodyes and Spirits 13. The participations of faculties out of mettals without a metalick matter 14. The delusion of the Alchymist 15. Diseases are appointed for a punishment and Reward 16. Some exercises beginning from salts 17. The spirit of salt is made earthly 18. A trivial Question 19. The device of frosty Tartar 20. From whence the Strangury of old people is 21. Four remarkable things issuing from thence 22. A second Question 23. A third 24. A fourth 25. Catarrhs or defluxions of the Bladder are ridiculous 26. A fifth Question 27. A sixth 28. Astrologers are taken notice of 29. Paracelsus is noted like as also Galen 30. The solving of a question proposed 31. The heedlessnesse or rashnesse of Galen THe spirit of the Urine laying hold of the volatile earth that was procreated by a seed and a hoary and putrifying ferment stirs up the spirit of Wine the inhabitant of the Urine as yet laying hid in Potentia or possibility by the which as it were by two Sexes concurring the certain aforesaid earthly spirit drinks in the one onely aforesaid Coagulater by reason of which reciprocation or mutual return a most thorow connexion of them both ariseth in acting because they conjoyn in manner of spirits throughout their very least parts And so the Coagulater doth at one instant coagulate the spirit of Wine that was potentially stirred up in the putrifying ferment whereunto when the hoary or fermental putrified Masse hath applyed its matter they are condensed or co-thickned together into a true Duelech surely a Monster this new something coagulated in the middle of the urine Nor therefore capable of being again resolved into water For it is a rocky Animal Being like unto no other and the which therefore Paracelsus names Duelech And that Being will the more easily enter into the mind by a daily example which the Fountaines of the Spaw present unto us For they have a sulphureous spirit manifestly tart from whence they are called the sharp Fountaines and also a vein of Iron For both being of an imperfect and immature shape are contained as dissolved in the simple water Therefore they both begin mutually to joyn their reciprocal forces against each other And at length when as their strength being tyred they have desisted from their action they are condensed into a stony body which affixeth it self to bottles in the form of Oker and so the water returns into its antient Element as uncloathed of every strange quality Which Sharpish Fountaines if Paracelsus had sufficiently contemplated of or he had neglected the history of the Tartar of Wine borrowed from Basilius Valentine for he had known that there is not the like birth of Oker and of Tartar of Wine At leastwise he might have been with the more difficulty convinced Because Tartar is resolved into water but Oker is not as neither is the stone For neither have I ever attempted to deny that solid bodyes are constituted of Liquors But I refuse tartarous liquors they being forcibly brought into the Causes of Diseases as in the Treatise concerning Tartars but on the contrary I have reverently admired the activities of spirits on spirits Truly since Oker growes out of the waters of the Spaw or since a stony crust is spread over bottles throughout their whole hollownesse let it first of all be wickednesse to give the water of the Spaw to drink if we believe that Tartars are made just as Oker is in the Spaw-water That is if we believe that there is Tartar in the water of the Spaw which is presently to be coagulated in the Drinker he commits wickednesse who gives the Spaw-water to drink For while the acide or tart salt of Wine corroded the Lee that salt indeed which before was tart and not coagulated remaines tart and is coagulated Neither doth it change the essence of Salt although that salt which before was fluide be constrained or bound fast together In like manner also although the Lee hath supt up the acide spirits and coagulated them into it self yet a solid body remaineth while the spirit of the acide salt is coagulated into the solid body of Tartar of Wine Yea before that it be fully coagulated it affixeth it self to the Vessel For in the Generation of Tartar of Wine the spirit acteth on a body and there is altogether a far different action while two spirits act on each other For in this action even
of the Animal or Vegetable in their rocky nature are for the most part the more civil ones and so being as it were houshold Citizens they are the more easily admitted into our Common-wealth for their countenance do cause a hope of their Signate that as oft as they depart from their stony disposition they also obtain a power of executing the natural endowments promised in their Signate they enter into Wedlock with us and communicate their intimately espoused promised vertues unto us The which cannot happen but by a full resolving of them into their first Being For I have made the stones of fruits to wit of Medlars Dates Peaches c. Volatile without any Caput mortuum or dead head after that they had returned into a milkie juyce And that indeed without a separative distillation For I have found that this kind of remedy doth restore no otherwise than as Aroph doth preserve Of which two I make this difference that restauration is the cutting off of the received inclination but preservation is a prevention of that which is to come through a hinderance of the disposeable matter But in a true cure both are included Furthermore for the true resolution and melting of Duelech being generated the Ludus of Paracelsus obtaineth the Chiefdom not that it is a flint and that children do play with it even as some have interpreted the Etymologie thereof But because Ludus is alwayes extracted in the form of the ancle of a die or square cube of the preparation whereof this is the description according to the Author Ludus being exactly beaten or pounded calcined and boyled even into the form of an oyl the which he by almost one only word calleth the Gawl of the earth and a corrected Altholizoi which soundeth al. tho oli gesotten or that which is wholly converted into an oyl by boyling Which most eminent preparation of Ludus hath hitherto been made known but to a few Mortals under that brief Tract of words And although the world be worthy of Compassion and that its preparation may in a more manifest sense be described yet the manifold Contemners of secret things are unworthy that those things should be manifested now which God for most weighty reasons would have to remain among a few and the little ones of this world in the possession of the treasures of his own dispensation until that nothing be hidden which shall not be revealed in its own fulness of dayes in which fulness of time Wo to the world and to its confusion Yet will I speak a little plainer that those only who are skilful in the Phylosophy of the art of the fire may comprehend me Let Ludus be beaten into a powder in a Morter and under a Pestil And then again under a Whetstone in a stonie or marble morter Then afterwards let it be calcined not indeed with a roasting fire but let there be added unto it the Circulated salt whereof Paracelsus speaks in his book of renewing and restoring and the salt being distilled from thence is called Ludns Calcined Because with the small labour of two houres it will be wholly converted into a slat Let Ludus therefore being thus calcined and reduced into a salt and being of equal weight with it self run down of its own free accord into a moist place But let that salt being resolved be shut up with Hermes Seal in an Egg with a long neck and let it continually boyl in Sand with a fire of the second degree untill that all the Ludus shall in its own equal weight stand like a more gross Oyl upon the water which it drew from the ayr of the Cellar For then all the Ludus is a volatile salt in the form of an oylie salt dissolved and it hath a certain kind of tast of urine and therefore it goeth through the urine with the drink in its entire vertues and dissolves every stone wheresoever it shall lurk in the Body because it is a volatile salt it is resolved in moysture neither is separated in the shops of Digestions But because it doth after some sort represent the tast of urine and in the mean time hath properties that are friendly to our nature it is willingly received and is also dismissed to the Kidneys The dose thereof is of 14 grains unto 20. with a small quantity of simple distilled-water And the stone of an indifferent or reasonable bignesse in the Bladder is resolved into the bignesse of a Pine-kernel especially in two weeks The liquor of Ludus being thus prepared is called by Paracelsus the Gaul of the Earth because if it be extended in paper it is of a dark Citron-colour not a little declining to green For it is a stone exceeding wonderfull it onely answering to the descriptions of Paracelsus to wit being bred of the salt of the urine of the Liquors of the Earth In the bottom of the earth according to the depth of the bladder in the Body of man But I have found it at the bank of the River Scalds nigh Antwerp where Bricks are boyled and it is scituated more or lesse than 40 soot under the Horizon according to the depth of the River For I compare the bottom of the River unto the bottom of the Bladder But it is not in the bottom of the River but it is extended in one onely and simple roof or story under the ground or bottom of the brim in a neighbouring field nigh to the sides of the Banks and that for some miles And that Vault or story of Ludus doth scarce exceed the thicknesse of a foot Neither also is it any further extended above or beneath the aforesaid Vault nor is it elsewhere round about to be found There is also in the aforesaid Field a frequent Fire-stone being rich in sulphur and vitriol The which although it be very hard under the earth yet it soon becomes brickle under the ayr to wit through its vitriol decaying by degrees But Ludas is a palish stone now and then covered with a clear crust throughout its seams being as to a great part of it volatile in the Potters Furnace For this stone is the top of Stone-breaks and the desire of those that have the stone Happy is he who can calcine the same as I have now admonished But the labour thereof requires not onely reading and thinking but a full knowledge being also doubly confirmed Because it is the labour of Wisdome the hope of Adeptists Therefore he is most Rare whom God in this Age that is full of misery hath throughly brought unto this Scope It is not sufficient to have known the Ludus or Cevilla of Paracelsus and the native birth thereof and that it ought to be reduced into an oylie volatile Salt without the loss or destruction of its natural Endowments But since there is not a more laboursome part in all Chymistry which Paracelsus doth often declare in the preparation of the Tincture of Sulphur which graduates or heightens the
its drying something that is not fixed doth of necessity puff out Moreover let the Retorts be senced with a crust or parger which may neither cleave asunder nor contract chaps or fall down of its own accord or be too much glassified Let also the neck of the Retort which hangs out be most exactly connexed unto the large receiving vessel that not so much as the least thing may expire But let the Receiver be placed in moist sand likewise let the boughty part thereof be covered in a Sack being filled half full with moist sand Which Sack let it be divers times renewed being tinged in the coldest water But let half of the Retort be filled with poudered Vitriol But distill it by degrees and at length let it be urged with coal as much as is possible for the furnace of wind which is blown by its own iron grate But when the furnace of wind shall cease to dismiss the spirit into the receiving vessel let the porch be opened on the side by which way the Reverbery of the flame of the wood may pierce under the Retort and let it so continue for five or six nights with the highest fire possible to nature The Retort perhaps in so great a storm of the fire will seem to thee to melt but nevertheless it will endure constant throughout because the outward coat of male or fence of earth with-holds and sucks the glass and so it is englassened as much as shall be sufficient for the work At length remember thou to sequester the receiving vessel from the neck of the Retort the fire being as yet most ardent otherwise thou shalt see in a more cold station the spirits to return into the Lee or Dreg which spewed them our Then lastly take the Colcotar or Lee remaining of the distillation which thou hast reserved from true Cyprus Hungarian or at leastwise Goslarian Vitriol Let that residing dreg being co-mixed with Sulphur be again burnt unto the every way confuming of the Sulphur But afterwards thou shalt bedew and moisten this feces with the aforesaid spirit For that spirit as it is presently imbibed in the glassen dish or gourd so being fetcht again from thence it returns nothing but a watery and unprofitable phlegm the spirit having remained imbibed in the Colcotar And repeatingly renew thou that operation six or seven times until at length the spirit that is poured thereon wax red which will swim upon the Colcotar which is a sign that we must cease from the plenteousness of imbibing And so let this rich Colcotar being well dryed be put into a Retort and let this rich Colcotar be distilled even unto its utmost spirits now waxing yellow and casting the smelling odour of grateful honey Yet remember thou to draw away the receiving vessel from the Retort being as yet of a bright burning heat and that this spirit must be kept by the mouth of a more strong bottle being close stopped with wax Whereinto lastly if thou shalt cast water the vessel it self presently breaks asunder Therefore by the only spirit of the former distillation this second spirit is bridled or restrained whereof scarce one pound is poured over from bottle into bottle but there is made a loss of one ounce at least And likewise unless the Receiver be seasonably taken away from the Retort as I have said thou shalt see the Furnance being cooled that most potent spirit to have returned into Colcotas from whence it was struck out by fire Moreover the Lee of Colcotar which is left of the second distillation is as yet wholly Coppery and waxeth green after many fashions From whence 1. That is manifest which I taught before Namely that the fire of Venus is not to be drawn out and had but by an every way destruction and separation of the mettal 2. That this therefore must be done by a far more hidden way 3. That the Vitriol which is rich in Copper is less fit for distillation than otherwise the common Vitriol is 4. That the Vitriol of Copper poures forth the spirit of the Vinegar of a mineral salt but not the volatile Liquor of Copper 5. And therefore that the sulphur of Copper is rightly called the sulphur of the Philosophers being fit for long life Being sweet I say in tast but not tart or sharp 6. That the spirit of Vitriol which is above perfectly taught cures some Chronical Diseases 7. And that therefore the spirits of Vitriol hitherto sold and in use are nothing but a mineral Vinegar being also adulterated in it self 8. That the residing Colcotar is most rich in a Medicinal Virtue 9. That the preparation of Vitriol prescribed by Isaac Holland and other Moderns hath not sent the Arrows unto the true mark 10. That our spirit above described and thus rectified as it is volatile and salt proceedes even into the fourth Digestion and reolves diseasie Excrements that are met withall in its journey And by consequence also takes away the occasional cause of many Chronical or lingring Diseases I have therefore already delivered the like Form or manner of distilling the spirit of Sea-salt of Salt-peter and the like Yet thou shalt remember that Vitriol hath in it self the earth of Colcotar wherefore the other salts do desire dryed Potters earth and that being exactly admixed with them But besides I have already delivered the manner of preserving from the Disease of the Stone by Aroph and likewise by Ale boyled with the seed of Daucus or the yellow wild Carrot I might therefore desist and repose my Quill and leave the matter to others more successefull than my self by wishing that every one may henceforward add what things he shall find out to be farre better For since Duelech besiegeth onely mankind and is produced from Excrements themselves after an irregular manner but doth not arise after the manner accustomed to other infirmities Therefore it seems to be singularly bred for a revenge of sin even before other Diseases and to be permitted by God in Children being as yet Innocent for the averting of a greater evil For although some Bruits do generate small stones in themselves yet those stones are not bred in them from the Causes of Duelech nor appointed for a punishment or tribulations unto them but rather produced for the profit of man But if therefore Duelech doth relate to the fault of sin but since sin hath drawn its rise from a Wood or Tree it hath seemed also to me that preservation of health in the disease of the stone is not onely to be expected from the seed of Daucus and some such like Herb but from some certain Wood Wherefore it is indeed true that a Wood against the stone of the Kidneys hath been of late brought unto us out of the Indies but I have not ever therefore perswaded my self that divine Goodnesse had so long denyed unto the Europeans that it might succour even the poor man that had the stone untill that through many expences a Remedy
also disturb the imaginative power because they actually proceeded through the arteries upwards as forreigners and strangers to wit by be-giddyng things whereby indeed whirlines only how cruel ones soever were presented the understanding remayning fafe For the occasional causes also of these whirlings do remaine in the places about the short ribs from whence they by the power of government vitiate the Brain it self but not the abstracted faculties of the mind which are immediatly sealed in the spirits Even so as the Elf's hoofe being bound to the finger restraines the same rigour of the Duumvirate in those that have the falling sicknesse I also well weighed as it were by an Optical inspection after what manner the first conceptions might be formed the midriffs and from thence being sent unto the head polished And at length after what sort these midriffs might be diversly tossed in dotages and Hypochondriacal madnesses without any running round of the head And how in drunken persons a whirling might accompany their foolish madnesse But elsewhere after what sort a whirling 〈…〉 of the head might induce no stumbling of the minde Even as otherwise how the memory might stumble the man remayning safe and sound Truly as I seriously and with much leisure weighed these things with my self I found that qualities do follow their own Idea's and by course act their own tragedies in the excrement themselves to wit which diverse properties of qualities I then at first cleerly apprehended to be as it were seminal endowments and true formal Idea's whereby indeed the strength of the sensitive soul for why they are companions of the same formal order was vitiated and variously subdued and yielded to the importunities of active Idea's Alasse for grief then the bottome of the soul so called by Taulerus manifested it self unto me which was nothing else but the immortal minde it self to wit in what great utter darknesses it might be involved as it were in coates of skin as it was fast tied to and entertained in the Inne of the very sensitive soul while the terme of life endures And so from hence I clearly knew him whom I have also therefore concerning Long Life by an unheard word explained to the honour of God the contempt of Satan and the Magnificence or great Atchievement of the whole Perigrination of man I have also taught concerning Long Life that the Head is the fountain of the growth of the parts placed under it which thing Crump-backed persons do also confirm and so that from the head the State and Duration of Growth is limited That bounds also are described by the hairs and therefore that heads void of care do scarce wax gray I profess therefore with the Schools That a vital Light is indeed diffused from the Brain as from a fountain and dispersed through the sinews and that that Light being absent the faculties that are silent in their proper Inns are also straightway silent through a priâ—ative occasion For although Sense and Motion do after some sort depend as well perceptively as executively on the implanted spirit of the parts yet because all particular parts are vitally nourished by a besprinkled light of the Brain The Thred also or Beam of this Light being intercepted Sense and Motion likewise are as soon as may be intercepted But these things do shew only a privative Apoplexie not indeed so truly a Disease as an accidental one even as I have shewn above in the Strayning of the Turning-Joyuts But not that therefore the fountainons cause of the Senses and Motions in the spirit dieth with that privation although the functions thereof be suspended while that Light from above is suspended For a Fly doth sometimes frequently flie when his head is taken off Also the Head of a man being cut off his joynts do oftentimes for a good while leap a little and are contracted and do as yet afford the signes of an in-bred motion But of a positive and diseasie Apoplexie there is a far different cause and property For now and then a depriving of Sense and Astonishment straightway lights into the palm of the hand or into the one only finger the motion thereof notwithstanding remaining safe Doth therefore Phlegm a forreigner to that finger fall into the middle or pith of the sinew To wit by a pipe wherewith the small Nerve is throughout bored thorow and conspirable with the Brain Or perhaps doth an unwonted Vapour of Phlegm run down thither and the which otherwise was wont or ought to climb upwards the nature of Vapours so determining and by a vital violent force obeying But at leastwise one only Nerve extended into the Tendon of the Palm bestowes Sense and Motion on the four fingers alike Why therefore is the Feeling alone stupified in one finger only Again What Vapour being ever lifted up even from the most tough snivel was grosser or not equal to that which ascends from the water Let as many as have been Distillers in the Universe answer Why therefore shall a gross Vapour of Phlegm the which I have sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere to be a non-being be required for an astonishment and not that of simple water or of the blood But if indeed a Vapour of the latex or blood shall effect that thing then also there shall be a necessary ordinary and continual general stupefaction of all parts without intermission And then if some forreign or exerementous humour or vapour be the ocasional cause of such an astonishment to wit the privative and stoppifying one of a nerve surely it is sent oâ— runs down thither of its own accord If it be sent yet at least not from the Brain or the marrow its Vicaress For so it should not straightway affect as neither at leastwise strike at one only finger and the utmost part of the finger which was but presently before healthy Neither is that Vapour sent from the spirit the Family-administrater of Life because it is that which should more willingly and readily go forth as being banished by transpiration Therefore that thing manifestly contradicteth providence and a natural care of diligence which alwayes dispenseth all things foâ— the best end Because nature as too injurious to her self should dash against the sinewes those things which she according to her wonted manner had more easily better and more nearly commanded away unto the natural and ordinary emunctory of the skin And so that vaporal Fable of the Schools which is to be scourged contains a manifold impossibility For the Pipe of the Sinews ends into the thorny marrow with a straight thred and a continued passage neither hath it any transverse trunks through which it should transmit that phlegmatish vapour sidewayes for otherwise there would be made a total loss of the spirits before they could come down unto the Muscle the Executer of Motion so far is it that it should suck the same vapour that way That Humour or Vapour therefore cannot be transmitted or descend unto one only finger and much
black Choler and jesting or merry ones from blood Surely otherwise we should all of us be daily jocound doaters or deprived of blood For feverish doarages are especially fetcht out of a feverish matter creeping into the shops of dreams and not from elsewhere But not that it forsakes the body that it may enter into the mind And likewise a doating delusion should never happen in a burning Fever in a Synochus or continual Fevers but alwayes in Quartanes and black Cholery Diseases Truly a Doatage is already from the very Beginning of Fevers To wit where the Fever and the Cause of the Doatage are jointy in the Root For the malice being encreased and the Organs weakened by little and little the Doatage or Delusion ascends unto the maturity of its own perfection So in Wine and also in some Simples yea and likewise in feverish Excrements a hidden Doatage is covered neither doth it bewray it self unlesse the power thereof shall ascend into a Constitutive mixture At leastwise all things do by the same Royal wax according to the Genius of their own malice Rage on the Organs of the Phantasie even as elsewhere concerning Madnesses The Seed therefore of the doating Delusion lurked from the Beginning in the feverish matter which at length is promoted unto its due malignity If therefore Madnesses differ in their matter and efficient cause That is in their whole Species and Being Surely the Falling-sicknesse and Madnesse do much farther differ from each other and do more differ in a forreign Seed than that one onely black Choler being exorbitant in its Seats should bring forth both Even as elsewhere concerning the Dunmvirate Madnesses I will say in one word are all nourished by the arteries and in the Inn of the Hypochondrial or Midriffes According to that saying In whom a vein beats strongly in the Midriffs those are estranged in their mind Therefore also they oft-times want an exciting disturbance before they relapse into a Mania or bruitish madness Because this is bred by a perturbation very like unto that CHAP. VII The Succours of Physitians are weighed 1. Of what sort the Succours of Physitians are 2. The vanity of the same 3. The hurt of local Medicines and their feigned derivation 4. The water in Vesicatories was meer venal blood 5. An Objection solved 6. A Vesicatory or embladdering Medicine is more cruel than the letting forth of blood 7. To what end Vesicatories were devised 8. A Clyster why hostile to the bowels 9. A Clyster never reacheth unto the gut Ileon 10. Laxatives in a Clyster are the more sharp being hurtful as purging things are but less hurtful 11. A poyson hurts to have taken it inwards by whatsoever title and entrance 12. That Fevers are never drawn out by Clysters 13. They therefore hinder long life 14. A Clyster how it names Physitians 15. A fore-knowledge from the use of Clysters 16. It is a blockish thing to nourish by Clysters 17. A conjecture 18. The common sort of Physitians are taken notice of I have determined to examine the common Succours before I determine of the nature of Fevers But those are Scarifications openings of the Fundament-Veins Vesicatories and others of that sort and they all concut unto the diminishments of the blood strength and body And the which therefore have already been sufficiently condemned under universal Succours They are indeed foolish aids about the superficies of the body when as the Central parts labour and are besieged and the which not being freed from the enemy it is vain and hurtful whatsoever is attempted by the gestures of such Apes Surely it is a vain rudiment of hope to be willing by consequence to remove the root out of its place by taking away the guiltless blood from the skin which thing Prince Infanto the Cardinal by his exhausted veins the Circuite of his Tertian Ague nevertheless remaining hath confirmed to Anatomists with a mournful spectacle And likewise a Paracenthesis or opening of the belly nigh the navil in the dropsie ought long since to have extinguished the like kind of hope For there it is plainly an easie thing to draw out waters from the nigh Center and daily to draw from the fruit a part of the water at pleasure But in vain because not any thing of the root departs And so incision nigh the navil doth only protract life for a few dayes But let Vesicatories or embladdering Medicines be alwayes exceeding hurtful and devised by the wicked spirit Moloch For the water dropping continually from thence is nothing but venal blood transchanged For while any one scorcheth his hand or leg the fire calls not the whey of the blood unto the burned place Neither doth that water lurk in any other place and waiting to run to it with loosened rains while the skin should be at sometimes scorched The water should be deaf at the call of the fire neither should nature obey a commander from without What if a water swims on the blood which they call Choler surely that floats not as being separated from the blood except after its Coagulation or Corruption Embladderers therefore intend this but not Preservation and Healing That salt water therefore is not but is made it is not separated I say from the Blood but the Blood thereof is transchanged into water very like unto the Dropsie Flux and the like defects By so much therefore are Vesicatories fuller of danger than the cutting of a vein Because this is stopped at pleasure but that not the which after the cuttings of a vein and vain Butcheries of the body is at length dreamed of for the hinderances of a Feverish Coma and so for the adulterating of a latter effect For they rejoyce to awaken the sleepy or deep drowsie sick by reason of the pain of so many Ulcers And however thou considerest of the matter it is a cruel torture of Butchers For neither is the drowsie sick ill at ease because he sleepeth But he sleepeth because he is ill at ease And so to hinder the sleep is not profitable But that only prevaileth to take away the root of drowsiness They therefore who suspend the sleep only by pains do cruelly drive the sick headlong into death For they flatter the people in being cruel toward the sick party In the mean time they persevere in the office of a cruel and unfaithful Mercenary Helper For if the drowsie feverish person sleep or being pulled be daily awakened such stupid allurements perform not the least thing in Fevers Wherefore I am wont to give my remedies in at the mouth and food at set hours nor to regard whether he shall sleep or not I say that antient saying with the Apostles If Laxarus sleep therefore he shall be healed For the tortures brought on him that hath a Fever have never profited any one But as to what pertains to Clysters it is a frequent and shameful aid of Physitians I at leastwise in times past never perswaded and described Clysters
of the enemy and wine add heat therefore he who proceeds by Wine heals according to the conformity of nature Notwithstanding let us grant that Heat Wine being administred is the greater yea also that the Fever is the sharper For what other thing follows from thence than that the Wine shall increase the vital constitution And that that state is nearer to the constitution of young folks than that which proceeds by cooling things or without the administration of Wine for cooling means are more like to death to cessation from motion and to defect But heat from moderate Wine is a mean like unto life and a means which the Archeus himself useth For the Constitution of heat increased by Wine is nearer to the Vigour State and Crisis than if the strength being weak there shall be the more feeble heat by abstaining therefrom These things concerning the drinking of Wine But concerning the drinking of water Let the decision be that feverish persons desire not hot water nor do they thirst after that which is luke-warm but cold water is to be admitted in a slack degree in the highest heat of the state of the Fever Neither must we be afraid as I have said of a co-mixture of the extreames Because experience hath long since successfully shooke off this fear But in other stations of Fevers neither is cold water as neither is abundance to be drunk yet thirst is never to be endured not indeed under sweat But then let the drink be hot If thirst be urgent and the Fever hath not the fodder of drink the in-bred moisture is wasted But moreover That which they accuse concerning the crudity of water take thou thus Water springing out of sand is simple and the best and it is to be taken from the fountain it self But that which runs thorow Pipes or issues out of a clayie spring is now partaker of a mixt malignity But this water I call not so much crude as infected For water by it self deserves neither to be called crude nor cocted as neither is it ripened by heat nor doth it attain any thing thereby for it is sufficient so that its highest cold be blunted but none may use infected waters as neither any cold drink in the Plague and malignant Fevers But there is a larger reason for an hot remedy But neither do I ever perswade a remedy which may moderate Fevers only by heat but as Wine profits by comforting and by more throughly introducing succours coupled unto it So do remedies by cutting resolving and cleansing and in that respect the more prosperousty because they have the Archeus in operating agreeable to themselves For thus far he co-mingles his own powers with the powers of remedies that the occasional cause may be put to flight and that the more firm health may not presently receive its strength prostrated At length perhaps they will object against these things That since heat in a Fever is the effect of the spirit that maketh the aassult his being wroth It also followes that from the measure of heat the wrothfulness of the Archeus is to be measured and by consequence that whatsoever increaseth a feverish heat doth also increase a Fever I have answered before that there are many branches effects or various Symptomes of one root And that oft-times doating delusions Coma's or sleeping Evils intermittencies of pulses to wit things denoting an increased Fever do happen under the more mild heat Even as from a tender branch of an Acorn there is a greater leaf than from an old Oak There is therefore an Elenchus or fault in the argument to say the Fever is the greater in the man for I abhor that encreased Fever the which mortal increased symptomes do follow But I in no wise fear the Fever to have increased because the Archeus doth the more strongly rise up for the expulsion of the root of the Fever And if they in conclusion call that thing an increased Fever I little dwell upon it For so also the Schools perswade that we are not greatly to be afraid of accidents unexpectedly happening besides reason It is therefore to be noted That the Archeus is never enflamed in his whole For otherwise about the end of the fit the whole Archeus being dissolved or wasted should be the cause of fainting The Archeus therefore is enflamed in much or a little portion of himself And therefore the Archeus being encreased by Wine if more thereof be enflamed yet more of him is not lost and yet he more strongly strained the occasional cause than if the Archeus be not strengthened and encreased and a less part of him be enflamed CHAP. XIII The Essence of a Fever 1. Of what sort an Essential and Natural Definition is 2. Diseases are Beings subsisting by themselves and not accidents 3. Why Diseases inhabite in a strange Inn. 4. A Disease is not only a Travel nor a Motion nor a Distemper nor a Disposition 5. The Essence of a Fever which the Schools are hitherto ignorant of 6. There is therefore another Scope of healing than what hath hitherto been 7. That the occasional Cause alone distinguisheth Fevers 8. The cure of a Physitian is made easie THE definition of a thing is not to be framed from the general kind of the thing defined and from the constitutive difference of the Species's or particular kinds even as I have elsewhere demonstrated in Logicks Because besides rational and irrational if so be they are as yet the constitutive differences of living Creatures no differences of like sort appear in the Schools But a natural definition ought to consist of the material and internal efficient or seminal Causes Because those two are those which constitute the thing it self and that the whole and they remain unseparably essential in it as long as it self is and so they explain a thing by its causes and the properties of these Truly Fevers have a matter and an internal efficient cause after the manner of other Beings subsisting in them although all diseases inhabite in a living body because they are not Beings of the first Creation but begun from the curse of the departure out of the right way And therefore neither have they properly their own seminal Being which constitutes and nourishes them But they have an occasional Being from whence they are stirred up instead of a seed The which ceasing the Disease ceaseth As oft therefore as that which is not vital is inserted into a vital soil the Archeus is angry and becomes wroth that he may exclude that forreign thing out of his Anatomy The which I have perfectly taught in the entrance of this Treatise by a thorn thrust into the finger Therefore a Fever is not only an expulsive endeavour or alterative motion and much less the alteration and disposition it self as the Schools have otherwise thought but a Fever is a material part it self of the Archeus defiled through indignation For a part of the Archeus is defiled through anger
by ungrateful dissolved bodies and afterwards a superlative one by grateful Dissolvents 24. A general kind of Medicine 25. A conclusion unto Physitians 26. The praise of the volatile salt of Tartar This ulcerous or corrupt age of most perverse Wits will not suffer those that are admonished to repent For so far are they as yet from that that most Practitioners refuse to enquire into these greater Secrets because they every where inveigh against Sciences which they are ignorant of But because they are altogether ignorant of the same they both almost triumph and also gratifie each other concerning their ignorance neither is it manifest that they have spent their time in those things unprofitably because it shameth them not to have a vile esteem of Chymical Science by Writings and Taunts as a smoak-selling and delusive or false Art But they know not that since of a Non-being there is no knowledge and no conception in the mind answering thereunto Therefore also in that whereby they deny the truth of science they manifest that they are ignorant of the same that is vilely to esteem of that which they are wholy ignorant of And there are others who more mildly but alike blockishly say 1. Those things belong not to our judgment or employment they no way touch at medicinal affaires for we follow things approved from of old 2. Chymical medicines cast a smel of corruption being hot violent and not common 3. We have Servants who faithfully prepare those medicines which are for use And it is unseemly for a learned man to excercise the composition or preparation of medicine 4. The smoak-selling Experimentators institute all horrid evacuations being full of terrour because they are supported only by Mercury and Antimony they being manifest poysons And so they are to be reputed among Mountebanks or Juglers These are those things which they by reason of their ignorance thrust upon the unwary vulgar whereunto I in order thus give satisfaction We treate of medicines but not of things which concern a corriar or potter They therefore suppose a shamefull evasion that they are ignorant of what it had behoved them to learn Neither also is there a trusty foundation from antiquity it being always ruinous they going where it hath been gone not where they were to go they alwayes following the flock of predecessours and mutually subscribing to each other through the blind judgments of their mind our fugitive servants also will answer I being silent from whom they borrow the corrosive powder of Precipitate and of another more sweet or lesse poysonsome and likewise the vitrum or glasse of Antimony and the floures thereof Cinabrium and in summe nothing but poysons for the transplantings and cloaking of great diseases But all things notably adulterated for the desire of gain For it is easie to deceive the ignorant in things which they professe themselves to be ignorant of For there are essential oiles set to sale and the which are valued at a great price they being all and every of them adulterated whether nine parts of oyle of Almonds were co-mixed with one part of essential oyle is a matter of easie experiment For cast it on a sponefull of Aqua vitae and whatsoever shall swim atop let it be the essential oyle but the rest oyle of Almonds And that thing thou shalt the more certainly know if thou shalt make tryal in a Bath The oyle of Sulphur is for one half of it raine water but the distillation of Vitriol is brought wholly into deceit and is more frivolous dayly The which will presently be manifest through a simple examination by a Bath That scarce a sixth part thereof is the pure distillation and that as yet loaded with the tincture of oaken bark In the next place unto the second particular I will by and by answer Now it is sufficient to have said that the more choice Physitians at this day do not despise Chimical remedies the which their bookes do lately testifie And so the Fox dispraiseth Grapes and Hens that are sequestred from him in the Tree But how much they can performe the experienced sick do speak though we be silent Unto the third It is no disgrace or uncomelinesse to have prepared some the more choice remedies with ones own hand and to have bequeathed and delivered those medicines unto his posterity by his hands For neither was it an unbeseeming thing for the High Priest of the Hebrewes to have struck down Oxen and to have played the butcher for the salvation of the people Is it happily a more glorious thing for the Galenical rout to have viewed stinking dung and to have stirred it with a stick than for us to have handled Furnaces vessells and coales surely if they had the weight of truth they would knowthat the works of charity do not defame any one But they who have not charity account all things disgracefull besides gaine and Lucre. Depart ye from this pride and be ye mercifull as your Father which is in heaven is mercifull For else he will say I know you not that live for gaine and deceite But indeed disgrace hinders not these somewhat ambitious ones but ignorance and the covetous desire of Lucre For they make more account of the number of visits than of the glory of curing which wholly buries it self in having done well For as soon as they are dismissed from the Schooles with the title of Doctour they enquire through the Streets and Inns with the eyes of a Lamprey whether there are not sick folks which may entrust them with their life But stop your proceedings Medicine is not to be excercised after the manner of Mechanick arts And because Physitians err in this point the Father of Lights withdrawes his gifts after that Medicine is managed as a Plow Possess ye Charity and gain Will voluntarily follow you with Honour and Glory the which take hold of a Physitian that shuns them whom the most High hath commanded to be honoured Unto the fourth I grant that all kind of Knaves have most licentiously thrust themselves into Chymistry no less than into Medicinal Affairs and that a various destruction doth thereby daily arise unto mankind on whom surely the Magistrate ought of right to be severe in punishment But these things do not defame honest men It is certain that deceit and the adulterating of Medicines have always been annexed to gain But as to what pertains to the reproach of Remedies Chymists that is to be sifted by a larger Discourse First of all it is suitable in this place That Science or Knowledge hath no enemy but the ignorant person Not any such one but him that is proud and refuseth to learn The which is manifest by the already mentioned Corrosives and indeed manifest poysons that they become sweeter than Sugar The same thing is also more easily manifest and to our hand For truly Scarwort Frogwort Apium risus c. do forthwith in distilling lay aside their embladderring power
which without a necessity may roast Yellow Choler into another and worse excrement For while I speak of the shops of nature I know that nothing is moved by it self nor that there are foolish heates intended for no good end as neither digestions proposed by nature her self for ridiculous objects For if there be a smal vein whereby the spleen inspireth a digestive ferment and vital vigour into the stomach I see not why therefore so many fictions of Black Choler are convenient from whence so many troops of calamaties have followed in a chaine For how silly a thing is it to have feigned the worst drosse of nature as they confess it to be and a divorced and abhorred excrement to be to the stomach for a delight To cure its appetite To render so Noble a part subject to the defiling as well of the powers of the meates as of the vital functions For Black Choler which originally is prepared of the Chyle is of the same particular kinde with that which is generated of burnt Choler unlesse they had rather now also to admit of a fifth Humour or it is diverse from it If of the same species Now the same this something shall be sharp cold and earthy and shall be fiery bitter and shall be made immediately out of diverse matters disposed unto their own diverse ends And that by one only Elementary simple and not seminal agent And Galen with his hony shall be in a straight And likewise Yellow Choler from its own disposition shall be subordinate unto Black Choler as to a more perfect Being by Elabouration and so Yellow Choler shall not be one of the four but a Semi or half-Humour But at least wise I perceive not why a superfluous drosse should be dayly made and ought to be of the constitutives of us Or what dullnesse it is which hath constrained them to feign so many fables Truly however that page of healing be considered of it is wholly without necessity rowled among dungs There is indeed a sharp vital and spiritual Ferment in the Spleen whereby the stomach cocteth the which to wit fayling the appetite also goes to ruine And therefore the old man saith That in Fevers soure belchings comming suddenly upon burntish or stinking ones is a good sign For it is the Ferment inspired by the Spleen being the subject of a great title and of a general use in no wise to be dedicated unto a black balast and melancholy excrement Paracelsus writeth that man could have more commodiously wanted kidneys and a Spleen which besides his own Idiotisme conteins implicite blasphemy For whatsoever God hath made was and shall be always the best by far or most exceoding good 1. But if the Schools had ever poured forth Aqua fortis they had easily found that sharpnesse dissolves earth but not ferments it 2. That the action of Ferments is one things having a co-resemblance 3. That the earth is not Fermentable because an Element is not to be Fermented by the Ferments of fruites by reason of the constancy and simplicity of it self For if the leaven of bread-making doth not Ferment woods or stones what Ferment for the earth shall therefore be found For truly such is the condition of Ferments not considered by the Schools that a Ferment from the time that it is once recieved it continually fermenteth further neither doth it cease as long a it findeth an Object co-like unto it self Wherefore the Elements indeed do conceive the strange Ferments of fruits but are in no wise therefore fermented by the same Because all Ferments are unsuitable to the Elements Because they want transmutation and seeds suited to themselves Otherwise if the Earth were fermentable dead carcases could not be in-humed but that presently the Globe of the Earth would be made destructive unto us with a deadly Gore 4. Therefore Galen never knew those things he never knew Aqua fortis yea not so much as Rose water he never smelt out formal Ferments 5. Neither doth Black Choler any way Ferment Earth if it no where and never were Although dungs may boyle up through a dissolution made by sharp things Furthermore of one only Bread and Water Chyle is made If therefore in Bread and Water a fourefold Humour in nature should lay hid by the same right every juice of Herbs ought always to be fourefold which thing be it dreame Let us grant therefore that only of Bread and simple Water the foure feigned Humours are made First of all these Humours are not made seminally and dispositively of simple Elementary Water therefore the Chyle shall be made of the bread being resolved and of this only and this Chyle shall be afterwards changed into four Humours by the priviledge of the acting Liver And therefore now an exorbitant and irregular Liver For truly of every natural agent there is only a single and simple action It must needs be therefore that either in the Liver there are foure agents of sanguification at once or that the quaternary of Humours rusheth into feigned dungs For if four Humours are not made out of the simplicity of the aforesaid Chyle of natures own accord neither from the power of a fourfold agent co-labouring in the Liver or if the supposed Quadruplicity of feigned Humours be not made by a power or faculty of the agent or patient Truly whatsoever is denied under a disjunction may be denyed copulatively by reason of the largenesse of a negative Therefore I conclude if from the connexion of a simple agent and single matter a vital action of sanguification proceedeth Surely that action as it shall be simple so also it shall not be able to be the Mother of above one onely Humour But if we feign varieties of Humours to be in the blood by reason of a diversity of Meates Now an hundred Humours at least shall be to be granted in the blood from as many Meats being taken at once But the Schools will have it that under the degree of one only digesting heat many meates are changed into Chyle and that through the government of the same heat four Humours are always produced in the Liver And that as well in the Swede as in the Aethiopian At length they confesse sanguification to be the proper workmanship of the Liver But of the Spleen only through inordinacy and aide although in the mean time the Spleen be letted and involved in dungs about the coction of Yellow Choler into Black 1. First of all Galen goes to ruin with his Hony the which he writeth to be wholly turned either into Blood or into Choler 2. The generation of Humours proceeds not from an Elementary power 3. We must not run back unto a vaine Quaternary of Humours 4. Otherwise Bilification or making of Choler should be as naturall to the Liver as its Sanguification or making of blood is 5. The blood shall be nothing but a confused connexion of Humours an irregular generation but not a natural composure but deprived
Anthonies fire c although the mouth might sometimes be bitter yet the liquour issuing from an Erisipelas is not bitter but plainly of sharp is become salt That Humour I say of whose burning heat the Schools complain in an Erisipelas is called a most sharp one when as in the mean time it bears neither any sharpnesse nor bitternesse before it And they are unconstant in this when as notwithstanding the sharpness of Humours ought to differ as much from their bitterness as Pepper doth from Coloquintida or from wild Cucumber And so the Schools have treated thus carelessely and unconstantly concerning the properties of their own Choler Because in Law a varying witness is unworthy of any credit he is accounted for an unsavoury or foolish or false witnesse and he is constrained to restitution by how much hurt he hath brought unto another by his testimony But come on then let us suppose but not believe that the liquour swimming on the blood is Gauly Choler and of the natural composition thereof At leastwise that blood on which that Choler now swims should be no longer blood if one of its four constitutive parts hath failed it and there be made a seperation of the Marriage bed to wit a real seperation of things composing for Cheese from which the Wheyinesse is withdrawn is no longer Milk For neither do I deny that the whole entire body subsisteth from an union of Heterogeneal parts but the integrity of the former composed body ceaseth assoon as one of its constitutive parts hath retired The Schools indeed suppose a permanency and co-knitting of four Humours for the constitution of the blood Yea besides this simple and vain supposition nothing hath been hitherto proved by the Schools which may not be more worthy of pity than credit Therefore I deny their blockish supposition not proved to proceed unto the false derivations of Choler and embassages of these into the diverse parts and passions of the body If they shall not first make it manifest concerning the question whether there be any Choler requisite for the constitution of the blood Therefore Choler hath not place in the constitution of the blood although a uriny wheyishnesse swim upon blood let out of the veines For that whyishnesse is unto the blood by accident which thing the blood of those who have drunk little and laboured and sweat much doth sufficiently prove For oft-times the blood of such being taken away by Phlebotomy wholly wants all Wheyishnesse And by consequence it should be deprived of Choler And likewise neither doth that blood cease to be blood the which doth not admit of Wheyishnesse but by accident The which I have in the Chap. of the Liquour Latex hitherto unknown to the Schools concerning the rise of medicine elsewhere demonstrated For the Latex is left in the blood for its own ends the ignorance whereof therefore hath hitherto secluded Physitians from the signification of the urine and the knowledge of many diseases I will therefore re-sume by supposing That yellow Choler is naturally a watery liquor swimming on the blood Let the Schooles therefore at least reach if Choler be an Humour most fiery representing fire and conteining it in substance and properties how fire can glister in a meer salt water How is it that it is not stifled in that water After what manner do fire and water co-suffer with each other under the famlinesse of unity as also the air immediately under Phlegm What have they any where found in nature which may constraine fire to conjoyn in salt water They will finde at length that they are driven to believe these trifles by reason of a Quaternary of Elements and a necessity of mixed bodies Both which after they have been oppressed by demonstrations propter quid or for what cause the world will Sue for my writings The very Schools themselves and all posterity will laugh at the blockishnesses of Ancestours which have hitherto been so stubornly defended they being so pernicious in healing and false in instructing Because will they nill they they ought to swallow two Maxims of mine elsewhere demonstrated One whereof is That there is no Element of fire and that kitchin or artificial fire is not a substance And consequently that if more things than one should concurre unto the composition of the blood at least wise that four Elements could not flow together thereunto And therefore that the fiction of four Humours doth badly square for our blood for mixture tempering strife and likewise for the truth existence actuality diversity and healing of diseases and cures But the other of my Maxims is elsewhere sufficiently proved That every sublunary visible Body is not materially composed of four as neither of three co-mixed Elements They must therefore seriously repent Because the fire is neither an Element as neither a substance neither is a salt watery liquour to be called into the composition of us for the feigned comparison of a Microcosme or little world that it may represent the form of fire Again I by way of connivance suppose That nature scarce makes enough blood of all the food dayly even as in the book of the unheard of doctrine of Fevers At least wise nature approves of that since she hath hitherto appoynted no place of entertainment for superabounding blood Yet she alwayes prepares out of all food both Cholers abundantly and super-fluously which the Schools prove by the tincture of the urine and filths of the belly therefore at least wise the nature of the Liver daily erreth and is founded in errour and offends also in abstinent persons fishes and Nations that are satisfied with the drinking of water only Because indeed it generates the least of a super-abounding fiery and earthy humour and yet more than it hath need of for its own nourishments Why therefore doth not nature offend rather in quality even as she daily without distinction offends in quantity Why also in the place of blood to wit the fourth ordinary Humour doth she not likewise in offending produce a certain abortive excrementitious blood to be sent away into banishment as she daily actually banisheth the two excessive Cholers out of the composition of the blood and fellowship of life Why also doth she daily bring forth more of malignant humours and those to be expelled out of good and much juicy meats moderately taken than out of the best blood Since as Galen is witnesse in hot natures hony which otherwise in temperate and therefore in Sanguine persons is totally turned into blood is wholly turned into yellow Choler To wit it s other three companional Humours being excluded Whence it followes That the framing of Humours proceeds not from the complexion of the food but altogether from the condition of the Liver From whence consequently if more of both Cholers than is meet be daily made that all that is to be attributed unto the offence and vice of nature And therefore that every naturall complexion of the Liver is vitious
obtained a sprout Because there will be those who knowing no better shall see themselves as it were excluded from medicine and through indignation will shut the doores against truth knocking Others who have grown old in sluggishnesse being unapt to learn better things will despise others before themselves I will go against them For indeed when Physitians had seen the blood of the veins to be thickned into clots they considered that there was a certain red liquour and running and also another which in the beginning indeed flowed with the red liquour but that it soon setled and clotted into a jelly of its own accord For such was the primitive inspection and Anatomy of the blood It hath also been believed hitherto that the blood is at least that red and fluid liquour And it hath been unknown that although in the Meseraick veins fibers and the beginnings and rudiments of sperm or seedinesse were not yet obtained yet that true obtained not yet fibrous was in the same place because they might see the blood in the veins under the Liver not to differ by way of colour from the blood of the hollow vein above the Liver As soon therefore as the ham of a virgin being let down into water they let blood from her they with joy observed that the blood immediately tinged the water and moreover certain threddy fibers resembling as it were the liknesse of a cobweb whence the Schools without delay pronounced that phlegm was now manifestly to be seen And also our doctrine might be judged a brawling about a name if a fiber did not appear after the death of the blood onely For in a dead carcase also long after the colds of death the blood notwithstanding remaines un-coagulated in the veins and therefore so long is alive For milk hath not this phlegm because in the seperation of its heterogeneal parts it hath Cheese and clots wherewith it is constrained For I speak of milk and blood even as they are Beings existing entire in act they being not seperated through corruption But the Schools behold the blood while it is now a dead carcase being coagulated neither properly while it is that any longer the Etymology whereof it hath as long as it floweth No more then a dead man is a man with an estranging particular They also presently added a third Humour to the blood which should be the Gaul nor that as yet different from the Wheyie urine and sweat and the Water accidentally swimming on the blood neither have they heeded whether it were bitter and whether from a deserved title it possessed the properties of the Gaul or not It hath been sufficient and pleasing to them that it should be a watery liquour or barely of a clayie colour For the law of founding the Gaul was in the pleasure of the Prince of Physitians but not any longer of nature He fell into the meditation of four Elements yet a fourth Humour was wanting wherefore that their number might answer to the Elements which were thought to be four and to flow together well nigh unto every constitution of a body a fourth Humour was seasonably devised being therefore like unto earth and black the which while they long in vain enquired into they at length by a proper and rash boldnesse commanded it to proceed from a re-cocted fiery and Gauly liquour so as that Choler the name being retained was commanded to degenerate from yellow into black and from an invented fiery liquour an earthy one proceeded And its bitternesse for in live bodies they have commanded it to be presently scorched roasted and fried at pleasure with an equal importunity being roasted into an adust Gaul they have willed to assume a sharpness under the Lukewarmth of life and so of a fiery matter a cold and earthy product to be immediatly made by an act of the fire and lukewarmth The modern Schools in the mean time kick against it at unawares while as they accuse any distilled things of an heat borrowed from corruption of matter For as the former feigned black Choler which might fill up the number of Elements they at length prosecuted it with all conjectures although ridiculous ones For so they introduced yellow Choler by the jaundise and bitter vomitings for a foundation of nature and art Truly the liquour swimming on the blood let out of the veins since it shewed forth no bitternesse at all young beginners might even from thence have doubted of the nature of Gaul if they had but once only lightly tasted a finger dipped therein Wherefore when the Schools observed that by vomit yellow and also bitter excrements were frequently cast out yea that now and then they dissembled the juice of a Leek of disolved Verdigrease or the infusion of an Azure stone they determined of Choler more certainly than certainty it self Neither was it any longer to be disputed concerning it as neither against him that denied such principles but of the Choler of the Urine I will by and by speak under the inspection of urine and afterwards they boldly also affirmed that Choler to be in the urine in any dungs whatsoever and also in the filths of the ears and eyes But the jaundise hath more fully confirmed this doctrine because it is that which overspreads the mouth and spittle with bitternesse and stirs up the itching of a Citron-coloured skin Therefore it hath easily been believed that all these same effects are borrowed from the Gaul Yea they have affirmed that all such diseases of the skin are from adust Gaul and offending as wel in quantity as in quality and from the vice of the Liver in bringing forth more Gaul than is meet To wit by which circumstances they have supposed that they have sufficiently and over proved the existence and necessary association of Choler From hence afterwards arose a dream which conjoyned those four Humours together they remayning in their essence and that from a co-heaping thereof one only blood did from thence proceed and that every humour did again rebound from the connexion and composure of the blood as oft as it should please an Elementary strife to wit a distemper or at the pleasures of Laxative medicines I will now willingly declare openly mine own and those daily observations For first of all if the more plentifull hard and scarce sufficiently chewed meat be taken at supper on the morning following yellow vomiting and bitter in the shew of yolk of eggs or otherwise like Oyl pressed out of the seed of Rape roots frequently succeedeth From thence therefore first I conjectured that that was through an errour of the digestion of the Stomach but not from a vice of the Liver from a defect of Sanguification or the making of an abundance of Choler For truly oftimes meats badly digested and chewed being partly turned into an yellow balast are beheld to be cast up together with the same vomit And then I conjectured that the rules of Sanguification standing those yellow and bitter excrements were
that last sub-division of their finenesses and Atomes all Seeds Odours and Ferments which they lifted upward with themselves do dye together and do return into their first Element of water whence they were materially formed Hence Clowdes as long as they are Clowdes do stink in Mountains but not after they are by the greatest colds there extenuated into the last division of fineness And this necessity hath been in nature that the middle Region of the air should not far of from us be most cold For therefore the water alwayes remains whole as it is or without any dividing of the three beginnings it is transformed and goes into fruits whither the Seedes do call and withdraw it Because an artificial diligent search hath shewen me indeed after what sort the three first beginnings and that in a proportionable sense are in the water yet by no art or corruption of dayes are they to be divided from each other For an Element should cease to be a simple body if it be to be seperated into any thing before or more simple than it self But nothing in corporeall things is granted to be before or more simple than an Element The water therefore is most like to the internall Mercurie of Mettalls the which seeing it is now stript of all manner of spot of Mettalick Sulfur it as well cleaves to it self on every side by an undissolvable joyning as it doth radically refuse all possible division by art or nature Hence Geber had occasion given him to say that there is no moysture in the order or course of things like to Mercury by reason of the Homogeneall or samely kinde of simplicity continually remaining with it in the torment of the fire For truly either it being wholly changed in its own nature flees away from the fire or it wholly perseveres in the fire through the transchanging of its seedes I confess indeed that I learned the nature of the Element of water no otherwise than under the Ferule or Staffe made of the white wand of Mercury But since I have from hence with great pains and cost thorowly searched for thirty whole years and I have found out the adequate or suitable Mercurie of the water I will therefore endeavour to explain its nature so far as the present speech requireth and the slenderness of my judgement suffereth First of all the Alchymists do confess that the substance of Mercurie is not at all capable to endure any intrinsecall or inward division and they shew the cause because by a homogeneall and sweet proportion its watery parts are by an equall tempering conjoyned to its earthly parts the aiery and fiery ones being suppressed in silence for that these should flee away if they were in it neither do they contain the cause of constancy here required and therefore that both these cannot forsake each other by reason of their just temperature they embracing each other though against the fires will In the first place the errour of the auntients hath deluded them concerning the necessary confluence of four Elements into the mixture of mixt bodies But surely that errour was not to be indulged by Alchymists because they are those who durst not enforce or comprise the air and fire of Mercurie when as they treated of its constancy And then because it was very easie for them to experience that the water after what manner soever either by art or natural proportion it was married to the Earth yet that it never obtains a constancy in the fire as neither to be at any time truly radically joyned to the Earth Because water after what manner soever it be co-mixed with Earth ceaseth not to be water For neither shall manner or proportion ever make water to degenerate from its own essence as neither shall any conjoyning of it with Earth be able to procure that thing But water remaining water is born alwayes to flee away from the fire Surely it is a ridiculous thing that the water should rather love a proportioned weight of Earth than an unequall one and that for that loves sake it should against its will the rather forsake that temperament of Earth For truly when the speech is concerning the co-mingling of four Elements it is understood of pure Elements and those plainly unmixed together and so not defiled with any spot of mixture or otherwise prevented by any disposition For neither doth the water carry a ballance with it nor beares a respect as to weigh the Earth that is to be co-mixed with it that it may be the more toughly conjoyned to the same I greatly admire that the wan errour of the co-mixing of Elements being received hath brought forth such soâ—tish absurdities among all the Schooles and that they by that absurdity alone have locked the gate of finding out of Sciences and Cauâ— Mercurie doth not indeed admit into it or contain so mâ—ch as the least of earth 〈◊〉 is alwayes the Son of water alone Yea earth and water can never be compelled into any naturall body or be subdued into an identity or sameliness of forme by whatever skill that thing be attempted For Tâ—les or Bricks if from moyst Earth they are boiled into a shelly stone they do not receive water but for the guidance of the Clay but earth hath a seed in its own Salt whence the Clay becomes stony through the coction of Glasse-making Therefore of the water and earth there is onely a powring on and applying of parts but not an admixture of growing together For whatsoever is meet to depart into a compounded Body and of divers things to be converted into this something this must needes be done by the endeavour of the working Spirits and so far of those things that do contain them as they do promote the matter by transchanging it into a new generation But the Elements are Bodies but not spirits and much lesse do they also act into each other The Earth therefore ought first to loose its Being and be reduced into a juyce before it should marry the water that by embracing this water gotten with childe by the seed it might bring it over into the fruit ordained for the conceived seed But what agent should that be which should transport the earth into a juyce and not rather into water since the earth being a simple body should be changed into nothing but into a simple body its neighbour Surely another co-like Element should not cause that seeing nothing of like sort hath been hitherto seen to agree with the water or air Nor at length should the earth intend the corruption of it self since this resisteth the constancy of Creation Therefore although part of the earth may be homogeneally or by way of simplicity of kinde reduced into water by art yet by nature onely I deny that thing to be done seeing that in nature an agent is wanting by which agent alone onely mediating the Virgin-earth or true earth is reduced into Salt and from thence into water Let it be for
a Lesson to Chymists That the Earth although it was in its first constitution created yet properly it is even a fruit of the water Therefore neither do generations or co-mixtures ever happen in nature but by a getting of the water with childe And so that as long as the water is chief in the seed never any generation proceedeth from thence Therefore much lesse is there a flowing compound body to be exspected from thence because it resisteth the fruitfulness of the fire And that thing least of all as oft as water and earth are mutually connexed to their own bodies Therefore the constancy of bodies is onely in the fire in the family of Mineralls and indeed most perfect in the purest Mettalls Because the Eternall hath not created moysture to be â—â—kened in its constancy to metallick Mercurie And therefore there is in Mercurie it self even as in the Elements a near reason of an uncapacity to be destroyed For truly I have discerned in Mercurie a certain outward Sulphur containing the originall spot of Mettall the which because it is originall therefore is it also taken away from it with difficulty Which at length nevertheless being seperated by art skilful men say that the Mercurie is cleansed of a superfluous Sulphur and superfluous moysture Because afterwards it may not by any fire be precipitated or cast into the form of Earth by reason of its greatest simpleness whereby it is compared to the Element of water For it hath lost its earth that is its Sulphur which earth in the center of its essence is no less from the Element of water than its remaining refined Mercurie which earth albeit it had from its first beginning most deeply co-mixed with it self If therefore the Mercury in its former state had a suitable temperament of earth and water therefore at leastwise after the taking away of that Sulphurous earth it had lost its anâ—ient uncapacity of being devided the which rather by a contrary disposition of relation it haâ—h hence-forward câ—nfirmed far more firm to it self for ever For Mercurie after it is spoiled of that Sulphur is found not to be changed by any fire because it is the Mercurie of Mercurie But the Sulphur is death and life or the dwelling place of life in things to wit in the Sulphur are the Fermenâ—s or leavens putrifactions by continuance o â—ours specificall savours of the seedes for any kinde of transmutations The Mercurie therefore being cleansed of its originall spot and being a Virgin doth not suffer it self to be any more laid hold on by Sulphurs or seeds but it straight-way consumeth and as it were slayeth these except its own compeere For other sublunary bodies are to weak that they should subdue pierce change or defile Mercurie of so great worth Even as it well happens in other bodies where the seed which lurketh in the Sulphur sends it self into water But the Salt and Mercurie of things as it were womanish juyces do follow the conceptions of the Sulphur For Aqua fortis is not wrought upon Mettalls or Mercurie but by the beholding of the Sulphur For the spirit of Sea-salt without the conjoyning of some embryonated or imperfect shaped Sulphur doth not therefore so much as dissolve the common peoples Mercurie Therefore the Sulphur onely is by adjuncts immediately dissolved and changed by the fire which successive change the other parts of the compounded body do afterwards undergoe not but for the Sulphurs sake Therefore Mercurie of Mercurie or in Mercurie remaineth safe as well in fires as in its Liquor the air Otherwise if a Corrosive matter should touch on that Mercurie the pains of many might happily be recompenced Because the whole Root of transmutations is in the Sulphur Therefore there is another Sulphur of Mettalls internall to Mercurie it self and therefore it remains untouched by every corrosive thing no lesse than from the destructions of fire and air Yea a totall ruine of things should follow if every thing dissolving should pierce into the innermost Root of dissolving And although Silver dissolved in Aqua fortis may seem to have perished as being in the form of a water yet it remains in its former essence Even as Salt dissolved in water is remaineth Salt and is fetched from thence without the changing of the Salt Which thing surely should not thus come to passe if the thing dissolving should in the least be joyned in dissolving and should not be stayed by the Mercurie of that composed body Therefore the inward kernel of the Mercurie is not touched by dissolvers and much lesse is it pierced by them But the ignorant being astonished at the novelty of the Paradox will urge If the water be not pressed together nor its parts go to ruine and Gold be of water alone whence therefore have Gold or Lead their weight For truly water hath not pores bigger by ten fold than the whole water In the first place as this doubt doth not take away doubts so it argues nothing against the matter of Gold to be taken from water onely For truly if Gold should be of four proportioned Elements and air and fire are light ones I therefore may likewise object from whence hath Gold its weight But if it consist onely of Earth and water from whence hath Gold its ten fold weight Therefore an argument which of it self doth not drive away difficulties doth nothing presse the adversaries But since it behooves an Interpreter of nature to be ready to search into and render the causes of nature I will shew from the premises that the seed of Gold hath a power of transchanging the water into this something which is far different from water Wherefore it is agreeable to nature and reason that in transmutation the water doth sustain as much pressing together going to ruine and aduniting as great Stones or Mettalls do overpoyse the water in weight and as much as the necessity of the seed doth require Because that of nothing nothing is made Therefore weight is made of another body weighing even so much in which there is made a transmutation as of the matter so also of the whole essence Therefore the water while it undergoes the lawes of the seed it is also bound to the precepts of the dimensions of its own weight co-thickning and going to ruine For if the water of its own accord flies up out-flees the sight in the shew of a vapour a hundred fold lighter than it self and yet remains water why shall not the water while it is made this something neither is any longer formally water also receive thicknesses greater than it is wont by ten fold for indeed on both sides the matter doth follow the properties of the seedes Therefore the liberty of nature is perpetuall of its own accord to cause and to suffer the pressings together of a watery body and will not undergoe those by any guidance of an Artificer yea Mountains are sooner overturned by Gun-powder Therefore there shall be sixteen parts of
Anatomical knowledge of the Throat than that it is narrow shut beneath being co-pressed by the Pylorus or lower Orifice of the Stomack and in mans Neck by very many Vessels 7. The Throat draws not as neither doth it contain Aire For it falls down through the proper motion of a moist membrane and a penury of the thing contained 8. The Oesand is not opened throughout its length unless it shall send nourishments thorow it The which if they are the dryer they stick in the passage neither do they easily descend unlesse drink be over-added which could not be done if it should contain air under the Gobbet or morsel but that Belching would follow But the Oesand layeth open about the Wind-pipe in the beginning of its self 9. The Oesand or Throat is shut beneath by a strange or anothers right and therefore neither is it opened unless by an external guest entring in or breaking forth or in time of hunger it is also opened by anothers will 10. No Aire and much lesse a Vapour breaketh forth upwards out of the Stomack without the sound of Belching 11. If Heat which is necessary for the Stomack causeth a Vapour yet it doth not thereupon violently thrust forth the same upwards so that it is able to stretch out and open the locked mouth of the Stomack and Throat Seeing any contradictory thing being placed there should be a continual Belching unto every one 12. In the Stomack no otherwise than as in the other Vessels which are of a lukewarmth every watery Vapour doth by the least pressing together sooner grow together again into drops then that it doth elevate or stretch out the co-pressed Membrane through its length And therefore neither do they make vapoury Belchings but Aire and a wild Spirit or Gas onely 13. That a Livery Spirit of the venal Blood being supposed all the Veines should by their heat bring forth Catarrhes either about the parts of the Liver or in their outmost branches which are neglected by the Schooles The first Conclusion From these Positions for the most part granted and clear by Anatomy it followes 1. First of all That no Vapour is carried out of the Stomack into the Head and that the supposed matter for Catarrhes or Rheumes faileth 2. If so great blindness hath circumvented the world in things manifest what is not to be suspected of things more hidden 3. That the Doctrine of the Schooles standing a healthy and hot stomack should generate much greater and more Rheumes than a sick one and otherwise a colder stomack which is already contrary to the Schooles 4. That they should rather employ themselves in cooling than in heating the Stomack 5. That all mortals should of necessity be Rheumatick and alwawes infirme 6. Because the same Oesand Brain and Stomack being actually hot all do equally consist of moisture and of the same figure or shape 7. That every man like Swine should almost at every pace naturally belch because an uncessant heat and moisture should of necessity send upwards a continual Vapour 8. That although a Vapour raised up from the Stomack should stretch out the Oesand yea should ascend without Belching yet it should wholly bee alwayes blown away through the mouth and nostrills before it should proceed unto the Brain through the strait and closed passage of the membrane Because that Vapour ascending from the meats out of the Stomack should of necessity also smell in every man of the meates and the transmutations of these and should be offensive to himself and the standers by so that if the Belchings are now and then smelling or of a stinking savour all the breath of all should also continually stink through an admixed flatus or blast of the meats 9. That seeing Belching is a wild Gas and a far more subtile thing than a Vapour and yet doth not strike the brain unlesse the mouth being shut it be dashed forth through the Nostrils surely much less shall Vapours be conveyed to the Brain 10. That Belchings are never carried from the Throat unto the Brain by a right or strait passage but only by the instrument of smelling and therefore that they do not yeeld a smel unlesse the mouth being shut and much less shall a Vapour of its own accord be carried out of the Stomack unto the Head 11. That that a vapour the matter of a Catarrhe might as yet by some means ascend unto the head or the instrument of smelling this ought not to be able to be done but by shutting of the mouth And so that there would not be a possible matter for a Catarrhe to him that gapes and therefore this is an easie Remedy for a Catarrhe 12. That seeing two bodies cannot naturally pierce each other in the same place and seeing the passage from the jawes unto the brain is narrow filled up for there is not a Vacuum granted in those Organs shut above nor passable for the breath although it be pressed together doth not breath forth upwards to the Head therefore a vapour cannot reach out of the stomack unto the bottom of the brain For example A Cane if it be stopped above although it be held over hot vapours yet this doth not admit them to ascend by reason of the presence of Air wherewith it is filled 13. It being granted that a vapour could climb upwards yet it shall not find any plain or hollow thing upon which it should grow together into drops And much less such a one which may represent the cover of an Alembick or earthen Pot but in the bottom of the brain whither the vapour is freely granted to ascend there is a narrow part the basin or bottom of the funnel which hath two tables toward the nostrils and as many toward the neck which two latter little mouths the ascending vapour should only find And they are almost continually filled with snivel are moist and do drop as the proper emunctories of the brain appointed for the casting forth of its muck or filth And therefore a vapour of its own accord ascending being granted yet there should not be a place for the growing together of a Catarrhe 14. A vapour if any one possibly being made from the stomack had also ascended even thitherto yea and had grown together into drops in so slender a space and if it should fall down together with the muck or snivel it should bring less damage than the muck it self which is the ordinary excrement of the Brain All which things the Schools have seen by Anatomy and shall by Science Mathematical if they do weigh them know to be unevitable yet they go on they have eyes and see not have ears and it is to be feared that they will not hear 15. That although belching be the Gas of meats and it bears their smell before it yet any kind of vapour of meats whatsoever doth give an un-savoury and unhurtful water For example let the snivel or spittle be distilled with a slow luke-warmth such as is
that of the stomack of a living Creature Certainly thou shalt draw out nothing but an un-savoury and no glewy water and much less a salt sharp and tart Rheume 16. That although snivel do slide into the jawes and doth diversly and oft-times badly affect these according to the divers indispositions of the snivel notwithstanding neither that filth nor the dropping down thereof can bear the reason of a Rheume no more than the urine sliding out of the kidney into the bladder is to be called a Rheume Wherefore if there be an un-savoury salt sharp or soure fluide or gross snivel sliding down into the parts whereby it is deputed naturally to be purged as it were through an emunctory it is not to be called a Catarrhe however badly also it may affect the parts even as also the urine if it shall afflict the bladder 17. By how much less ought the Flux of any feigned humour or dreamed excrement bred and derived after a manner through means places and journeys naturally impossible to be reckoned a Catarrhe 18. If the brain in living Creatures be not actually cold the reason of condensing of a vapour ceaseth but if it be less hot than the other parts doth therefore a vapour seek the more cold part by sense or feeling and choice because it desires rather to be coagulated than to remain as it is 19. Or are vapours driven by all the more hot parts on every side unto the brain as the more cold part But thus there should be altogether a continued unexcusable tempest in healthy folk But yet all these things being disregarded the which notwithstanding cannot have themselves naturally by way of necessity Rheumes should nevertheless flow down But not in the first place toward the outward parts between the scull and the skin For truly the Schools themselves do teach that vapours or the foregoing matter of a Rheume doth climb from the stomack unto the bottom of the brain and there doth find a certain plain an imaginary one nor as yet found by Anatomy in the hollow whereof it doth presently grow together and presently after that concretion it fall's down by drops Far be it surely from thence that an enemy which is a stranger a meer excrement a forreigner to the brain and the cause of so great infirmities passing into water in the lowermost plainness of the brain should from thence pierce thorow the very body of the brain or that in the form of water or at length again in shew of a vapour it shall sport in the aforesaid plain For not in the likeness of a vapour as though a vapour reacheth from the stomack unto the bottom of the brain and doth grow together in the place of cold as they say surely by the same opportunity of cold it shall remain water neither shall it be again made a vapour If therefore that vapour be now there made water by reason of the cold of the place it is not to be believed that this hostile water is drawn inwards and much less to have become so subtile that against the will of the receivers it should pounce the brain coats of the brain seames scull and the Periostion or skin covering the bones that it may be stayed and run down under the skin For besides unavoidable and very many absurdities that water shall be as it were rain water and unfit for slimy Catarrhs waxing very hard with muckiness Yea the Rheumes which are hence to arise should at the first sense of heat sooner vanish away by every sweat unless the Galenists do teach that the water which is made of the vapour of a luke-warm stomack is afterwards fixed Also that it hath become salt and sharp only by the touching of the plain which thing the knife hath not yet observed And then the skin of the scull being far more pory than the scull should sooner root out that water by transpiration or sweat than the evils from thence believed can be made Moreover the skin which is stretched over the scull is more toughly adhering hereto neither doth the steepness only of the place suffice for the flowing down of a Catarrhe and for the renting of the skin from the bone Yea and more is this water bred from the vapour of the stomack should of necessity have a driver within which should drive it thorow the brain coats bone and Periostion But that should not be any heat for then it should cease to be water and should again be made a vapour which is feigned to be condensed into water by the coldness of the brain In the next place Rheumes are said to be more accustomed to old folks weak people and to the colder stations therefore that driver or forcer shall be cold which after another manner is wont to bind the parts together and shall now the order of things being overturned drive the water thorow the brain and that indeed in the form of water And that driving or pulse in the water sprung from the meer vapours of the stomack shall be even in the brain which should open it self together with the coats and scull unto the water coming to it Again seeing all such water co-thickned by a vapour is said to be hanging on the bottom of the brain neither that it can there be detained beyond the bigness of a drop but that it of necessity will presently and droppingly fall head-long down or the brain being forgetful of its duty shall set up this excrementitious water by drops And then besides a driver the water should have need of a leader which should stretch out the skin and pluck it from the ribs that it may provide a place to wit in the Pleurisie for it self hastening downwards And as well the leader as the driver in the water should be more powerful than our Blas Lastly the mask of credulity being at once discovered at whatsoever price I shall prostitute the dreams of the Schools concerning Catarrhs none shall buy their false wares Neither could I hitherto sufficiently admire that the world hath been circumvented by Catarrhs that mortals have placed so great credulity by reason of one only fault to wit ignorance in a thing I say so blockish foolish and wholly impossible Because the Schools not finding a cause whereto they might ascribe the Catalogue of Diseases have commanded these dreams of Catarrhs to be believed But at least wise the sweat is salt wherefore the humour latex should rather afford the matter of a Rheume than that feigned vapour to be led through so many windings and scarce possibly consisting through a thousand absurdities Then also the accustomed saltness of the latex hath more immediate causes of pains than an unsavory water derived upwards in feigned vapours In the next place if water doth pass thorow the brain coats thereof scull and about the bony membrane shall it now therefore being wearied not be able to pierce even the skin also or shall it forget the wayes why shall the sudoriferous