Of the power of witches 779. 86 Of the nature and extent thereof 780 How a witch may be bound up in the heart of a horse 782 109 110 Witchcraft Simpathy and Magnetism do differ 759. 1 VVomen why monthly purged 405 24 VVomen are subject to double disieases 609 358. 17 VVomen consume not so much Blood as men 740 Yet they make more Ibid. VVhy they have so many conceits when with child 306 50 VVomb its overslowings cured by odorus ointments 114. 17 Remedy for a woman in travel 306. 46 VVomb a peculiar monarchy 575 A Twofold monarchy of a woman 609. 15 VVomb governs its self Ibid. 334. 43 VVomb brings forth an alterative Blas Ibid. Disseases of the womb differ from products 610. 19 The progresse of the wombs defects 612. 358 Its cure 612. 325 48 Sugar stirs up the sleeping fury of the womb 612 Wherein the fruitfulness of the womb consists 630 Where the womb of the urine beginneth 209 23 Womb warreth under its own banners 306. 52 Of the force of Imagination in women with Child 1117. 1118 The monarchy of the womb distingisheth a woman from a man 335. 48 In words herbs and stones there is great vertue 575 Silk-worms figure out a shadow of the Resurrection 684. 94 VVounds asswaged by odours c. 114 17 Hurt by the Moon-beams 141. 55 Z. ZEnexton against the plague 1144 Of the uselessness of some Zenextons 1145 Pretious stones not true Zenextons 1146 Amber a Zenexton and how so made Ibid. The qualities a Zenexton ought to have 1148 1149. Toad a Zenexton Ibid How the Toad is prepared for a Zenexton 1150 VVhy he is a true Zenexton 1152 A Poetical Soliloquie of the Translatour Harmonizing and Sympathizing with the Author's Genius WHen first my Friend did ask me to translate Van Helmonts Works wrapt up in hidden state Of Roman dialect that 't was a Book Of Med'cine and Phylosophy I took It in good part enough and did not doubt But to perform what I should set about By Gods asistance for I willing stood Much pains to take about a publick good I forth with entred on it and did see More than my friend thereof could tel to me For why since something was begot within My inward parts which loved truth but sin And selfish errour hated I began To feel and love the spirit of the man Whom I perceived like a gratious Son To build his knowledg on the Corner Stone And out of self to sink in humble wise As his Confession in me testifies The light of understanding was his guide From heath'nish Books and Authors he did slide And cast them of that so he might be free Singly to stand O Lord and wait on thee And in the pray'r of silence on thee call Because he knew thee to be All in All. And thou didst teach him that which will conduce To th' profit of his Neighbour be of use Both unto soul and body as inclin'd To read with lowly and impartial mind But as for lofty and and self-seeking ones Thou scatter wilt their wisdom wealth and bones Because thou art not honour'd in a lye Whether of Nature or Divinity But in the truth of knowledge of thy Life And of thy wondrous works which men of strife And alienated can no whit attain Till from the fall they do return again Helmont that thou returned'st I believe Thy testimony of it thou dost give When by the light thou saist entring thy dore Thou changed wast from what thou wert before And cause thou suffredst by a wicked sort For being good and once wast poyson'd for 't That 't was unjustly I am doubting past ' Cause th' Enemies conscience prickt him at the last And truely'n many places of thy Ream Words slow forth from thee like a silver stream And so that I at sundry times have found Sweet op'nings from the un'ty in the ground But did thy life in words alone consist Or art thou to be enrowl'd among the list Of Stoical Notionists which only spend Their time in contemplation and so end Their days or were good actions wrought by thee Which as the fruits discover do the tree Did shew that healing virtue forth did start From thy fire-furnace as love from thy hart If not how is it that thou dost us tel Thou ceased'st not Annually to heal Some Myriades or ten thousands yed Thy medicines were not diminished Or that thou wert so tender of the poor What if I say that bagd from door to door That thou retiredly didst live at home And cure them out of Charity not roâ—â— And gape for gain for visits as do most Physitians who unto rich houses post Floating about even as in a floud Of poysoned purged filths and venal blood And so the peoples wealth health life do soaâ— Through the sâ—ay viâ—ard of a Doctors cloak But Helmonts hand-pen asit plain appears Their false-paint coverings a funder tears In room whereof such Practicâ— Theory It doth insert that they as standers by Like Bibels Merchants will ven weâ—p and waâ—â— When they shall see their trade begin to fail And upright Artists held up by the â—an Of him who owns the good Samaritan Yet such School-Doctors shall not thus relent Whom Grace and goodnesse shall move to repent This is not utter'd out of spleen but pity Unto the sick in Country and in City No just cause given by these words to hate But to be owned by the Magistrate And I my self in former silly times Through School-tradition and Galenick lines Have wrong'd my body weaken'd my nature Clipping my vitals in their strength and Stature And though through Grace to soul and body to T' was turned to good yet that 's no thank to you Help Chymists help to pul their Babel down Builtby the pride of Academicks Gown Let Theophrastus Azoth Helmonts Lore Erect an Engine such as ne're before Hark Chymists hark attend Baptista's law He speaks to h's Sons as th' Lyon by the Paw And why as th' eye is opened to look May y' not discern Hercules by his foot Be it sufficient that he gives a tast Least pretious peat is he unto swine should east Be 't no dishonour to the Ghymick School That some mistakes thereof he doth controâ—â— Rather a praise unto the Masters eye Houshold disorders for to rectifie Strike Chymists strike strike fire out of your 〈◊〉 And force the fire unto the highest stint Of a Reverb'ratory such a heat As Galen back out of the field may beat And fetch th' Archeal Crasis Seminum To keep the field gainst a Rololleum Srrive not not by reason if you 'd win the day Pâ—ice your Athanar as he another way Aime not at lucre in what ye undertake Your motive love the spirit your guider make That day to day in you the Word may preach And night to night unto you knowledge teach That so Elias th' Artist if he come Ye as prepar'd may bid him welcome home And all well-wishers unto Science true Unto
it be the same and co-like then that one onely snivel is not the superfluity of both bowels therefore as the Keeper being well affected doth scarce produce any snivel and that likewise according to opportunity so being provoked it brings forth snivel according to its own indignation and the property of the bowel receiving To wit a fury being snatched to it it brings forth a Salt biting sharp and stinking thing or quality in its snivel exceeding a mean in quality and quantity For from hence are their gnawings of the vvind-pipe and from thence Consumptions and bloudy spittings c. For although an Imposthume full of matter may bring forth divers difficulties of breathing and straightnesses of the Breast yet scarce Consumption-Coughs Therefore I have thought these to spring from the hurting of the rough Artery or vvind-pipe But that the Keeper doth not touch at the Essence of the Brain I conjecture from a strong young man to me known who morning and evening hath daily undergone miserable spittings by reaching for some years he being in the mean time strong enough in his Brain Sinews and Muscles But where one of the faculties is notably hurt but the other not at all they must needs be both divers in property and Essences wherefore also the Keeper of the vvind-pipe and Head do far differ Therefore the Air after that it is brought down thorow the Lungs into the Breast and thrusts downwards the very transverse partition which is named the Diaphragma or Midriffe into a circular form then therefore the Diaphragma pierceth the pores thereof and straineth the drunk-in Air thorow it self which thing Odours drawn by some nostrils and at length returned by belching do teach For so the fume of Coals doth provoke vomit and doth sooner affect the Stomach than the heart yea the Sent of a dead Carcafe is felt about the Stomach long after So also a VVoman great with young bearing 〈◊〉 a dead child the very dead Carcase smells in her breath For that smell passing thorow her Womb and Midriffe teacheth that breathing is serviceable not onely for the cooling refreshment of the heart but for the whole Body So also from a pining fume others have shewen that their Stomach was tinged with yellowness by reason of smoaks So also the Stomach abhorreth the smells of loosening Medicines received although those very purging Medicines are cloaked with Sugar and Spice because it perceiveth the same Odours by its own smelling Therefore if an Odour doth proceed in a straight line unto the Stomach the Air also doth The Plague it self being introduced by an inspired breathing is forged for the most part about the Stomach therefore vomitings Head-ach drowsiness c. do accuse and shew the Stomach to be affected CHAP. XXXV The Image of the Minde 1. The fear of the Lord is the Beginning and Charity is the end of Wisdom 2. Man was made after the Image of God 3. Three Ranks of Atheists 4. The Authours wish 5. The Intellectual Vnderstanding of the minde 6. The intimate Integrity of the minde suffereth by frail things without the passion of extinguishing 7. The action of the minde is scarce felt or perceived in us 8. The first Atheists are scoffers at the divine Image 9. The second Atheists have newly arose 10. The Atheistical ignorance of this is manifested 11. The variety of vital Lights 12. The minde how it differs from an Angel 13. An intellectual Vision of the Authour 14. Every wish or desire without God is vain 15. The Authours misery 16. The Vision of the minde being separated from the Body 17. That the minde is figured 18. The minde is an immortal Substance figured with the figure of God 19. A common errour about the Image of God 20. The errour of those who think the Image of God to be placed in a ternary of Powers 21. Against the opinion of Taulerus 22. The Image of God in man hitherto not evidently shewen because it is incomprehensible 23. The minde is damned by accident 24. After death there is no more memory or remembrance 25. The will was accidentally over-added to the minde after its Creation 26. In Heaven the will is void 27. A will appeares in Heaven not indeed a power but a substantial intellectual Essence 28. If the minde be the Image of God this was known to Plato 29. The definition of the minde 30. That Reason is not the Image of God 31. The Authours Opinion 32. These two thinglinesses or Essences do lay hid in the Soul through the corruption of Nature 33. This love is onely raised up by an extasie not otherwise in the miseries of this nature 34. A precision or abreviating of the Vnderstanding 35. An Objection is solved 36. That a triplicity or ternary in the minde is unfolded in every Susteme or Constitution of the World 37. A Similitude for the Image of God is far another thing than that of a ternary 38. A repeated description of the minde 39. How the minde doth behold itself 40. The constitutive Birth of the Phantasie 41. The minde doth understand far otherwise 42. The Prerogative of the minde 43. An explaining of living love 44. The differences of Vnderstandings in mortal men 45. Why that desire doth not cease in heaven 46. A description of desire 47. How sin is in the desire of the mind 48. The love of the mind is a substance even in mortal men 49. How great darknesse hath veiled the minde by the corruption of nature 50. The Image of God quite marred or trodden under foot in the damned THe beginning of Wisdome is the fear of the Lord but the fear of the Lord begins from the meditation of eternal death and life But most of the Moderns with 〈…〉 Stoicks suppose the end of wisdome to be the knowing of ones own self I call the ultimate end of wisdome and the reward of the whole course of life Charity or dear love which accompanieth us after other things have forsaken us Wherefore also the knowledge of ones own self according to me is onely a mean unto the fear of the Lord. And the knowledge of life doth presuppose the knowledge of the soul because the life and soul are as it were Sunonymals And indeed it is believed by faith that man was created into a living creature of nothing after the image or likenesse of God and that his mind is never to perish or die But that other souls when they cease to live do depart into nothing The weights of which difference elsewhere concerning the birth of Forms But hitherto it is not sufficiently manifest wherein that likenesse with God our Arch-type or chief or first Example doth consist I will speak what I perceive under an humble subjection to the Church There is no knowledge more burthensome than that whereby the soul comprehends it self although none be more profitable Because the whole faith doth stablish its foundation upon the unobliterable or undefaceable substance of the soul I have found
that it is written that Abraham carried the Messiah in his Loyns That is unaptly withdrawn from the spleen unto the Reins from a bowel I say chiefly vital unto an excrementous shop and sieve I have noted also very many who from a Quartane Ague had retained their spleen ill affected to have been very much curtail'd in the provocation to leachery I have also observed Women in a difficult labour for some dayes an adventurous or experienced draught being offered them to have brought forth at furthest within the space of half an hour And that thing hath been proved 200 times and more For surely the Medicine being as yet in the stomach the mouth of the share is opened and the folding-doores of the Ossacrum are opened in the loins and the Young is presently expelled Indeed I have noted the Stomach to keep the Keyes of the Womb And this medicine I have divulged willingly for the good of my Neighbour that she who is in labour may not hence-forward undergo the danger of her life But it is the Liver together with the Gaul of an Eele being dried and powdered and drunk in Wine to the quantity of a Filburd-Nut The gift of God is in this Simple That seeing the Woman ought to bring forth in pain by reason of the envy of the Serpent God whose Spirit was carried upon the waters hath filled them with his blessing He would have the Eele or water-Serpent by his bowels of a sanguifying power to appease the rigour of that curse The Liver of Serpents would effect the same and perhaps better but in the experiment of the Eele the event hath never deceived From this time likewise the Judiciary divination by the Stars Hermes his scale and whatsoever is supported by the point of Nativity falls to the ground But upon occasion hereof I shall a little digress in what part the Young is knit to the womb by the Navil-strings and without the coat of the Secundines or the swadling-band of the Young it hath a substance in form of a Spleen as Vesalius witnesseth And so it hath as it were an external spleen to wit wherein as it were the venal bloud of the Kitchin and the Arterial bloud of the Mother is re-cocted the Spleen in this respect stirs up in me a suspition of a more exact sanguification than that of the Liver to wit as the venal bloud being there re-cocted by so manifold a winding of Arteries doth go back as it were from the stomach to the heart Even so as Birds and Beasts that chew the Cud do rejoyce in a double stomach At least it is manifest that that external milt doth command the conceits of her that is with child For the mothers themselves do wonder that they are then affected with such unaccustomed conceits longings furious frights and storms of troubles But it is no wonder to me seeing nothing is milty or like to the milt if it do not swell with the properties of the milt But that is a wonder that this flesh of the milt is not informed by the soul of the Mother or Young but that it enjoyes a life of its own being communicared on both sides For it hath not a sensitive Soul seeing that it is also long before quickning but it possesseth it self in manner of a Zoophyte or a Plant alive such as are Sponges and also the thicker muscilages swimming in our Sea which do enlarge embrace strain suck and shew forth rare testimonies of life being present with them Moreover if the poyson of a mad Dog or a Tarantula do make a madness limited and that like unto it self it is now wonder also that this milty lump is enlightned participatively doth live balsamically and move the minde of the woman with childe with a diverse passion As well because it performs the office of a Kitchin as because there are in the things themselves their own vain visions or apparitions as is manifest in a mad Dog But besides the minde of man being the near Image of the most high wholly immortal doateth indeed with the sensitive soul but is not capable of suffering by a little Liquor Because the passions of the sensitive soul do affect the minde which they cover within themselves do roul up and co-knit in a bond The minde indeed properly is not sick although it hearken to the frailty of the sensitive soul whence it is made manifest that the sensitive thoughts or cogitations are from flesh and bloud according to that saying For flesh and bloud have not revealed these things unto thee Therefore discourse and conceit is from the milt or spleen as being a bowel most sanguine of all and rich in very many Arteries But I have proved elsewhere that the conceit of a woman although it be formed in the spleen yet that it is brought down for the most part with a straight line unto the womb whether there be a Young within it or not and therefore the principality of the womb doth war under banners of its own neither therefore is it evidently seen in its own rest but onely while according to a wicked pleasure and fury it strains wrings blunts choaks resolves and looseneth its Clients poureth forth bloud c. But the Duumvirate doth on every side keep a due proportion of life and that with so sweet a pleasant tuning or musical measure of the life that therefore it hath hitherto been passed by by the Schools But as soon as it withdrawes its government the strengths of the parts how chief soever they are are eclipsed For so there are faintings Apoplexies Epilepsies heart-beatings or tremblings giddinesses of the the Head and madnesses And so indeed that as the occasional root of which defects is voluntarily consumed and the circuits and durations of the same do vanish away even as in the milder Fevers So also they may be voluntarily silent that they may forget to return however the boastings of Physitians do differ in this thing For those whose Roots do the more stubbornly cleave unto them they are the more fully con-tempered therefore after another manner they altogether resist a voluntary resolving and therefore they wax old together with it together with the nourishments of the stomach and do expect their own relapsing fruits unto the end of life And therefore an Epitaph of uncurableness of these defects not voluntarily ceasing is now every where read to be subscribed because they have hitherto wanted a meet Secret whereby they may be rooted out But the Roots of these Diseases as long as they do affect onely the inflowing Spirit they produce off-springs proper to their own seed and Inn For so the falling-sickness because it besiegeth both Spirits it dashneth together as well the faculties of the body as of the sensitive Soul And so that hath distinguished a great Apoplexie from a little one that the lesse hath besieged the inflowing Spirit but the greater the implanted Spirit Likewise there are in Simples those faculties which make drunk
Drinks Meats were swallowed down by a straight line unto the Stomach but to bend nothing toward the Lungs they devised sweet things which might serve for expectorating as they might cause a smoothness of the jaws Then afterwards they invented more thick Syrupes because they were those which they thought by licking them in by degrees would by a greater right slide in pare unto the Lungs But again all things sloathfully For first of all the Schools herein have forgotten the Head and next their own positions Then in the next place they have not considered that if such Ecligmaes should enter unto the Lungs they would cause more straightnesses and troubles than the filths themselves there running out and framed by degrees at leastwise they should heap up or increase evil by a new evil For in that place they should not any thing profit unless that for the future they should through the much straightness of passages increase the obstruction and render it grievous In that respect especially because Roses Colts-foot Fox-lungs Sugar c. do not a whit answer to a curative betokening because it is that which only requires a renewing of the changing faculty being hurt But those Medicines which do respect a more easie expectorating do assault the Disease behind and its effects only Seeing therefore in what part the utmost ends of the rough artery do end and breath into the Breast the Lungs do lay open it is sufficiently manifest that in the Asthma there is a straightness of the same pores Moreover they do as yet err that the Remedies of the Cough do not any thing differ from the Remedies of the Asthma when as notwithstanding they both do greatly and every way differ in their root and causes There is therefore a two-fold Asthma one indeed Womanish depending only on the government of the Womb but the other is promiscuous common to both sexes Surely a Woman is miserable on both sides which being excluded almost from all affairs doth not withstanding pay a sufficient punishment through a single Disease of any kind For this Asthma is so frequent to this Sex that the Schools have dedicated every Account of the number of the Womb which is very manifold unto the stranglings of the Womb and would as it were by one head or Chapter have passed by a great volume of Diseases For I have seen women-folks often who by the smell of sweet Savours besides Head-aches and threatned Swoonings fell straightway into an extream difficulty of breathing I have also observed others who the North wind blowing the Innocent were presently even in Stoves or Chimneys punished with an Asthma Lastly also others which from Anger a sorrowful Message drinking of Sugar Spanish-wine c. or also being chidden were presently taken with a lamentable Asthma For the Schools being alwayes busied about corporal Actions therefore also also do they perpetually worship Humours and have on both sides accused Phlegin raining indeed down into the Lungs That foul or stinking Vapours should ascend out of the Womb which should stir up their companional Vapours as well from it self as else-where out of the stomack whence they should press out all the expectorated Snivel or Filth the Author of an Asthma For the Schools have granted to such hurtful Vapours a safe conduct of piercing every way whither indeed there is not a free passage â—or Air which thing is manifest in a voluntary pressing together or deteining of the breathing Yea although these things have place only in a moist Asthma yet through the same ignorance they have not desisted to try any vain things by Clysters Blood-letting and Cauteries and solutive Medicines that even in a dry Asthma also they might give sufficient to the revulsion of feigned Vapours Therefore they have neglected that the Womb by the action of Government and almost after an influential manner doth at the will or beck of anger sorrow fear c. like death stop up the aforesaid pores of the Lungs where they end into the breast even so as the Moon by her Aspect only governeth the waters because the Life and Power of the Womb commands the whole woman To whom indeed therefore there is another Chin Wit Flesh Hair Bloud c. than to a man And again the furies and inundations of the aforesaid Government ceasing her breathing is presently restored free and that for the most part without a notable spitting out by reaching For neither doth the Womb rule the whole woman by the power of Vapours but by the meer command of Government seeing it is like unto a strange Guest no otherwise than as nourishably depending on the Body even as a shrub on a Tree in which it growes But besides the Womb lives in its own Square and hath known no enemy unto it self besides the passion of the mind wherefore it doth not serve the Soul but by waxing mad it exerciseth cruelty on the mind being urgent in disturbances no otherwise than on the Body For only the disturbances of the mind do drive the Womb into divers furies So that it cruelly rageth sometimes on the Sinews then on the great Guts Bones Bowels and Membranes the Heart likewise or Head joggs the Senses and mind For I have seen the Cords or Tendons being of times pulled together with great Torment voluntarily to leap out of their place and to have stirred up wondrous Convulsions of the Muscles and with great howling to have resolved them yea and in earnest to have put the very Bones themselves out of their place So also I have observed Apoplexies Palseys falling-Evils Jaundises Dropsies wringings of the Bowels the Megrim Madnesses and much tyranny of Diseases to have proceeded from the Womb which Diseases even as they have been in vain attempted by the Schools by manly Remedies I will say neglected and after some sort referred unto the choaking of the Asthma alone as if the Throat only by a singular Perogative should obey the Womb so truly the Sex is worthy of much Compassion being given unto us for a help of great necessities and as if it were therefore worthy of manifold misery For truly the Innocent and devoted Sex undergoes the double punishment of Corrupted Nature through individual womanish Miseries once it suffers almost all Diseases from the Womb and the same again as it is man But it is happy likewise in that it bears Tribulations patiently and thus far is nearer to the Son of God The other Asthma therefore is promiscuous to both Sexes But again an Asthma is subdivided into a dry moist one so reckoned to be from the Filths expelled The causes of the Asthma and manner of its making have hitherto remained unknown in the Schools And consequently the curing of an Asthma hath remained unaccustomed Let God be witness and judge between me and the Humourists how much I might commiserate the Sick that are badly entertained under the unhappy flatteries of Ignorance at length being cut short of their hope and
of a Disease and its immediate Essence may be manifest First indeed I have taught elsewhere that there is a certain unbridled imaginative force of the first motions not reduced into the power of the will being infolded in the Spleen And that the Almighty hath entertained a faculty of so great moment even in meer Membranes and almost un-bloody purses so that as well the Orifice of the Stomack as the womb it self may be of right and desert equalized to the heart To wit by reason of a notable Crasis or constitution of acting and likewise obedience performed unto it by the other Bowels From the prerogative of which power the spleen is scituated almost in the middle place between them both yet it is inclined a little more demissly or downwards because it hath undertaken the place of an entire root For it toucheth at the Stomack with its largeness in respect whereof a Duumvirate subsisteth But it reacheth the Womb with its other extream or end to wit being by its Ligaments annexed to the Loins And then I have said that although at first that which is imagined is nothing but a meer Being of Reason yet it doth not remain such for truly the Phantasie is a sealifying virtue and in this respect is called imaginative because it formeth the Images or likenesses or Idea's of things conceived and doth characterize them in its own vital spirit And therefore that Idea is made a spiritual or seminal and powerful Being to perform things of great moment which thing it helpeth to have shewn by the example of a woman with child For a woman with child if by her imaginative virtue she with great desire hath conceived a cherry she imprinteth the Idea thereof on the young even as of the plague elsewhere an Idea I say which is seminal sealing and of its own accord un-obliterable Because the Idea whereof waxeth green becomes yellow and lookes red every Year in the flesh at the same Stations of the Year wherein these Cherries do otherwise give the tokens of their successive change in the tree But why the Idea of a Cherry or Mouse is imprinted not on the mother but on the young and doth now presently wander from the imagining woman into another subject the which also hath oft-times began to live in its own quarter the cause is an uncessant nor that a feigned affection of the Mother whereby she naturally watcheth more for her Young than for her self Therefore the inward natural and unexcuseable carefulness of the Mother laying as it were continually on the Young directs the Idea bred from passions by one beam unto her Young And because the hand is the principal Instrument of activities therefore the carefulness descending unto the hand as it were for the defence of her Young receiveth the conceived Idea and proceedeth with it further on her Young But seeing Idea's are certain seminal Lights therefore they mutually pierce each other without the adultery of Union Therefore the conceived Idea of the Cherry through a supervening or sudden coming Idea of the Mothers care is directed unto the part of the Young where the hand hath touched the Body of the Mother For indeed there is alwaies a certain care for the end whereunto the hand doth operate The Hand therefore as the executive instrument of the Will deciphers the Idea of the Cherry conceived on that patt whereto the Mother hath moved her hand Whence it is even in the enterance manifest after what manner a cogitation which is a meer non-being may be made a real and qualified Being And then it is from hence manifest that the Spirit is primarily seasoned or besmeared with that Image and being once seasoned with some one kind of Idea it afterwards becomes unfit for the execution of other offices because the Idea being once conceived it is a Seal onely to perform things determined Therefore that Character of the seminal Image being once imprinted in some part of the Archeus causeth that it is thenceforth uncapable of other Offices For by reason of the skiey or airy simplicity of that Spirit the Idea's do so marry themselves unto it that the matter and its efficient Cause are not for the future separated from each other as long as there shall be an Identity or Sameliness of the supposed Character seeing the Idea it self is the seed in that Spirit which therefore cannot be spoiled of that Idea without its own dissolution For neither doth it just so happen to the Archeus as to Mettals which by melting return into their former State and do loose onely the labour of the Artificer It is alike as while a Woman with Child is affrighted by a Duck or a Drake For at that very moment the imaginative faculty imprints the Idea of the Being whereby she is affrighted on the Spirit So that that Idea is there made seminal and so indeed it doth not onely destroy the Embryo now formed but transformeth this Embryo into a Duck or a Drake Whence likewise is manifest not onely the Power and Authority of the imaginative but also that Idea hath drawn from the imagination a figurative Faculty and hath a seminal and figurative Power yea and a Power of Metamorphizing or Transforming And it follows from what hath been said before that a man of much imagination is of necessity also weakened in his Strength Because he is no otherways wearied than he who hath spent the day in tiresome Labour and should wholly fail aswell in Mind as Body unless he were refreshed with an acceptable Discourse a sociable Walking a pleasant Conversation and the more pure Wine According to that saying Wine moderately taken sharpens the Wit Neither is that moderateness to be delivered by ounces under the harsh Crisis of the Physitian while as by the Wise Man it is left free to every one according to his capacity Wine he saith was made for Mirth but not for Drunkennesse Sorrowful persons therefore being wearied exhausted and oppressed must be succoured with Wine even unto a chearfulness Therefore Idea's as it were formal Lights do pierce each other and imprint their own Images on that part of the Archeus whose Image and Seed they are Therefore the Idea's of inclinations do first pierce the Idea of the fructifying seed to wit for Manners Sciences Affections Diseases and Defects For therefore the Idea's of Women great with Child are easily co-knit unto constituting Idea's the which as they do oft-times corrupt manners otherwise good yea and also sometimes beget foolish ones so also they do not seldom amend other manners from the Womb Else for the most part Valiant Men are begotten by Valiant and Good Men For a Child by a rigid or tender Education begins to decline from his native Inclinations Then at length when he is endowed with some kind of Discretion by Exercises and Companies he falls into diverse Idea's of Affections the which he is constrained for the most part to obey for Life because they are implanted from
Favour a desire of Praying of Talking with God with humility an amorous perfect and exceeding delightful Faith or Confidence For these things the World is ignorant of For I being a Phisitian ought here on purpose to treat of Morality however others may laugh And that not onely as the indispositions of the Soul do defile and blemish or corrupt the Health But especially from that Title because seeing a Disease is the Son of Sin it cannot be perfectly known if the faculty of the Concupiscence of Sin be unknown from whence every assault towards a Disease drives it self into the Archeus But hitherto concerning Idea's conceived by the cogitation of Man of which it shall as yet be more liberally treated under the Chapter of Things Conceived Now it remains to unfold from whence Idea's made by man are of so great strength that oft-times they call for a Disease yea and also Death on the Imaginer From the Premises therefore we must resume 1. That Idea's are stamped in the Imaginative faculty by cogitation 2. That they imprint their Image on the Spirit of Life 3. That they are operative means whereby the Soul moveth and governeth the Body 4. That they are seminal Images 5. But that they are graduated according to the power and strength of the Imaginative Faculty 6. Wherefore that a humane Embryo is changed into diverse Monsters 7. That every man by the Images of Sorrow Terrour c. doth form seminal Poysons unto himself which do consume him in manner of the Plague or else by a violent languishing 8. That they do also passe forth out of the Body of the Imaginer because an Image conceived by a Woman with Child regularly wanders into the young even on the last day of carrying it in the Womb yet then it is without controversie that the young doth enjoy its own Life and lives by its own Soul and Quarter It is manifest therefore from the aforesaid particulars not only concerning the question whether it be to wit that there are in Idea's a most powerful force to operate but also because they are seminal that they do naturally pierce and operate on all things For truly if there be not a certain ruling and forming Idea of the matter of seeds formed by the generater the seed by it self remains wholly barren In the next place those Idea's ought to be immediately not indeed in the Soul of Man but immediately in the Archeus which maketh the assault because without such an Idea the Archeus should plainly remain an unpartaker of all action operation and propagation Therefore also by Idea's every motion and action of Nature as well in remedies as in poysons and every Natural power is seminally imprinted by every Parent whatsoever Yea forreign strange Idea's are introduced and those ascending into those already constituted because Idea's no otherwise than as Lights do mutually pierce each other and do keep a perpetual and co-marriageable mark of the Archeus with the Archeus which Idea's while they take hold of the matter of him a Disease is now bred For as seminal and primitive Idea's being planted in the seed by the Parents do figure a Man Bruit Plant c. So also the Idea's of inclinations affections c. coming upon them do determine or limit the countenance of a Man unto the delineaments or draughts of Physiognomy Which afterwards also are varied by the future Idea's of manners customes c. For bruit Beasts through the troublesome Idea's of lust do not wax fat even as those that are gelded do But Eunuchs if they are without care do fatten who else through the Idea of grief do also wax lean But from whence there is so great power in Idea's it is worthy to be known that the table or matter upon which even as on water the phantasie decyphers its Idea's even as on water is the very substance of the Archeus it self the which being once defiled by a conceived Idea and as it were instructed by a seminal principle is afterwards uneffectual for other Offices Therefore indeed those that are without care do slowly wax grey and in a contrary sense but many cares do speedily draw on and ripen old age according to that saying my Spirit shall be diminished and my dayes shall be shortned Rightly therefore was it said from of old That the perfect curing of Diseases consists in the removal of the Cause or Root The which if it should be the visible peccant matter it self even as the Schooles do nevertheless point it out to be now a Fever or the colike Diseases could not be cured unless all the occasional matter were first removed which thing is as manifestly false as it is most exceeding true that Fevers are silent the same occasional Cause remaining So indeed I have oft-times perfectly taken away the Colick Choler Flux Bloody-flux and other Diseases by a true Laudanum without Opium although the residing mass or lump were as yet entertained within Therefore all visible and forreign matter either happening from without or sprung up of its own accord within how degenerate soever it shall be from the very nourishment of the solid parts and a liquor separated from them it hath it self alwayes by a proper name after the manner of an occasion and a provoking Cause whether that shall be for a primary Disease or indeed shall be produced and constituted by a primary Disease consequently afterwards pricking forward the Archeus unto the erecting of a new storm or Disease And so every Disease is caused from the violent assaulting Spirit by Idea's conceived in the proper subject of the Archeus by whose fault alone a live Body but not a dead Carcass suffers all Diseases But if that this off-spring of a Disease be spred into the families of the digestions it produceth occasional matters indeed for secondary Diseases which are bred to stirr up afterwards the same Archeus unto new seminaries of Diseases For so wheresoever Hippocrates hath not found any visible matter as the occasion of a Disease he accuseth a Divine Beginning in Diseases because it is invisible from the hidden Store-house of seeds from the invisible World or out of Pluto's River of Hell or from the Chaos of successive changes Therefore I do in all things wholly admire at this Divine Beginning be it spoken by the liberty of Hippocrates in Diseases as the judge of a broken purity so also a revenger of an hidden impurity and concupiscence lurking in the flesh of sin And therefore also persevering in the radical disorder of a vital principle But as it doth immediately sit in and is awakned by a vital and seminal principle Hence also consequently Diseases have properties directions proportions durations affections and respects unto members and places which things certainly in a good understanding cannot be attributed unto the ulcerous predicaments of heats and colds as neither to Distillations and Catarrhs flowing down with a voluntary fall of weights But it is profitable to have made this
as the first do touch at this string in healing Therefore if mortals shall dash themselves into a presumption of Faith if they depart from the Word of God and for the explications of their own consent in Opinion do as it were behold themselves in the glass of their own complacency they now thereupon do stamp on themselves staggering Idea's and those of a careless Religion they from one point being at first doubtful do dispute as being uncertain of more they proceed unâ—â—â—theism through a height of Irreligion But if they shall fall into Superstitions they 〈◊〉 Idea's agreeable unto Necromancy or Divination by calling of Spirits from whence they prepare an apt Soul for Stygian or Hellish Vanities Whereunto as unto those who are become mad the enemy of mortal men doth now very easily associate himself especially if a stubborn Superstition be defended and that with a strong desire of hatred or some other Sin For they stamp Idea's on themselves which are second unto a voluntary blindness We must here again call to mind with the first that all Ideal Images are seminal in respect of a real Being brought forth by imagination And then in respect of the Spirits as they are vital and married to a conceived Seed whose matter they do assume or table on which they are deciphered they are made the Instrument fit for executing the ends of Idea's Therefore by both these Prerogatives they pierce the Archeus and do estrange him unto the strange Scopes of their own Perturbations If therefore Faith and a confident Superstition do offend onely through credulity or a rash belief now they forge Idea's whereby they think themselves enchanted uncurable and are made the servants of a desperate madness For their strength being prostrated they are made lean and being mad do wax pale But if an undiscreet and inordinate scrupulousness doth vex them it self frameth a careful Idea on them disturbed with the fear of Hell from whence their Life is a Horror unto them Their Conversation of all things is Fearfull almost as if it were Diabolicall For they generate a foolishness the which they acknowledge confess bewail because they are not able to free themselves from it And at length they as impotent do so fail or decline that they snatch to them an Idea as it were their Soul But if a scrupulousness do run back unto the mind for deliberation before a totall victory and nevertheless doth in the mean time stamp new and inordinate Idea's It being unstable easily wanders into the opposite part and as if now abhorring its former scruple doth assume a Spiritual liberty with a presuming on desert and a despising of others For which way soever it endeavours to rise higher it is sunk so much the deeper For presumption is nothing but a vain madness hanging alwayes on others Wills or Judgements Yet is it as it were proper unto the most of mortals For by reason of Virtues Wit Learning Birth Riches Beauty Strength Boldness or Courage Arts much Talking or Voice every one forgeth Idea's applauding himself the which do make almost the whole World mad Of whom it is said That the number of Fools are Infinite But the most hurtful madness of Presumptions is in Political matters and it is that of boldness because it is that which doth oftentimes subject its own unto a tormenter Surely madness is seldom without Presumption if Stupidity be not akin to it For indeed the Idea of Faith Despair Scruple Irreligion Arrogancy Esteem c. because they respect the Powers which are more abstracted and Intellectual and do the more oppose infused Grace they do for the most part so beget a hidden madness that it is not but slowly discerned by Spiritual and those much Exercised men Which be-madding Idea's those do follow in Order which belong to the more corporeal Disturbances For first of all as an hard emulation of Jealousie is a Hell which throws a man headlong into very many Miseries Also in the next place the Idea's of Lust and Fornication do besides Madnesses stir up also many Sicknesses together But all Exorbitancies of Disturbances if they are sudden strong frequent or of daily continuance they imprint Idea's and Infirmities like unto themselves therefore also durable for Life Indeed there are some who are truly wise but if they shall pitch upon a matter whose Idea hath made them mad they do presently bewray an occult madness I say a suddain terror and grief have oftentimes extinguished some with an un-fore-seen Death In others also they have at least-wise caused a Sounding They have stirred up in many Women an Issue of their Menstrues durable for Life But if the force of an Idea shall not tyrannize on the venal blood and therefore shall not banish this as hateful but shall keep it in its possession in the place about the short Ribs it there seals the Falling-Sickness But lingring grief and that which is by intervals being interrupted with a little comfort doth stamp an Idea from whence Hypocondrial Melancholly in Women but the Jaundice in Men is bred if the Idea's be sealed in the blood But if in the very bowel of the Spleen it attemps an Asthma and Choaking But if grief be connexed with an Idea of Despair it breeds the Palsie or Convulsion especially in Virgins But lingring grief when it is joyned with premeditated anger or hatred doth bring forth Sobbing trembling of the Heart or a stubborn suppression of the Menstrues Yea if those kind of Passions shall be strong they cause the Falling-Sickness and Abortion or a Miscarrying or do Choak those Women which go with Child If anger be suddain and the which notwithstanding ought to be restrained or dissembled It stamps an Idea from whence there are Fallings down of the Womb wandrings unto its sides with intollerable pain but in Men there are Asthma's Shortness of Breath and a Fever which at length passeth over into the Jaundise or Dropsie If a violent affrightment or Fear doth rush upon one Epilepticall or Falling-Sickness Idea's are forged which do remain for Life But Hatred and Avarice do generate a Leanness or Atrophia or Consumption for lack of nourishment they stamp I say Idea's answerable to their own Desires and they decline so far to folly that they little esteem of their own Life and Fortunes of their Neighbours believing that nothing doth happen unto them more pleasant in their Life than the shameful Satiety of Revenge For those kind of Idea's do make Lean and because they are bred by slow and resolute Perturbations they increase day by day and do for the most part continue for term of Life Neither also doth the Seed being corrupted or the Menstrues detained stir up Diseases of the Womb but these are latter Products and Defects coming upon the Idea's of alterations For the Womb as it hath a particular Monarchy so also particular Diseases Because every exorbitant affect of the Womb is a certain madness or befooling of the Archeus
in the Womb. For even as there is a ferment of a be-madding fury in the Spittle of a mad Dog an Idea I say which a little after doth make him that is bitten Mad So in some Simples there is a sealifying faculty of Madness and sealed in some Excrements being detained or bred in the raging Womb a madness of fury there is in them which doth either propagate the madness conceived on the off-springs or perseveres with barrenness unto the finishing of their radical Fury Surely it listeth me to contemplate of a Power in the Womb like unto the imaginative one of the first motions As it were of a most powerful Blas of the Stars turning and overturning all things upwards and downwards For the Womb hath had its own Government hitherto and hath kept it entire over the whole Body yea alwayes hath cruelly exercised it unto the sore troubling of the Sex which is to be pitied But for the instruction or orderly preparing of every Monarchy a certain governing Faculty such as in malice and affects of the Womb doth clearly appear to be monstrous is alwayes primarily required and another angryable Faculty which is unfolded under a womanish Life by the diverse animosities of affections The disturbances of which Faculties and the overflowing exorbitances sprung from thence certainly do presuppose nothing less than the fury of the Womb For what can be more madly done than that the Womb should strain the Neck of a Woman and miserably destroy its own subject should contract the Pores of the Lungs should violently powr forth the whole Blood For truly at the killing of its Woman the proper death of the Womb doth of necessity follow therefore this very thing is by consequence to cause its own destruction by a deliberated force From whence the argument of a twofold Monarchy in a Woman is at least-wise seen To wit from a duality of the Womb with the Body of the Woman the Enemy of of Unity and Fuel of discord But although such a choaking doth for the most part take its beginnings from the disturbances of the mind and Idea's stirred up from thence and the which being deadly doth obliterate the birth or original comeliness and life of the whole Body like unto Hornets that are stirred up Yet the Womb in a Woman surviveth so that she that travaileth being dead the Womb hath expelled its Young sometimes many hours after Therefore there is in the Womb a certain Animosity and Fury from Idea's conceived exercising the Vicarship of the mind from a certain Being and it is in the Womb by reason of its singular Life Every Disease therefore of the Womb is potestative being directed by the government of the Womb either on it self or on the Body of the Woman From whence entire Idea's may be not unfitly discerned from corrupted ones For seeing the Womb governs it self and lives in its own Orbe from a strange venal Blood therefore it is scarce ill at ease unless it be weakened by a Being of things conceived yea it is alwayes after some sort mad as oft as it is ill at ease For whether the monthly Issues shall stop or immoderately flow are discoloured waterish black clotty offend in the smallness of quantity Gonorrhea's or the Whites do issue forth or the Womb it self being moved from its place being eccentrical doth hugely deface or destroy or in the next place being unmoved doth bring forth an alterative Blas or produce effects nigh akin unto an enchantment or lastly doth stir up the Being of an Apoplexie Epilepsie Palsey giddiness of the Head Megrim pain of the Stomack Jaundise Dropsie Wounding Asthma Convulsion Heart-passion c. it is all one because its Fury varieth not but by its Tragedies wherein it abuseth its Power and the Womb sporteth by a Monarchal liberty over the whole entire Body For truly without material Vapours it bears the Keys wherewith it open the Veins stirs up incredible fluxes of Blood and without any motion of it it shuts the Pores of the Lungs according to its desire yea and takes away the transpiration of the whole Body at its own pleasure For it is president or bears sway over the Moon in the Body it despiseth Age Nature Maturity and untimely Ripeness And likewise it causeth Abortions and takes away fruitfulness and in the mean time compleats its voluptious Fury by a Lord-like tyranny It perfects the sore shakings of the Joynts deprivings of Speech dis-joyntings of the Knuckles for the Luxury of its Fury And although a Woman be not mad under so great Evils yet the Womb is mad in all the aforesaid exorbitances She is miserable therefore who layes under such a command She is subject I say unto so many Diseases as a Man and doth again obey the same from the Being of her Womb For she also at this day paies a double punishment as in Eve she is guilty of a double offence Yet the Womb is not a part of the Man as she is a man It is indeed in man and lives by his venal Blood no otherwise than as Glew by a Tree and that sexual part commands the whole Body much more powerfully than the Stones do in a Cock or a Bull who in their gelded ones do expresse notable varieties For truly not only every part doth hearken unto the Womb but the violent commands of the mad Womb do punish the Body of the Woman together with her Life Indeed the passions of the Soul do only stir up the Womb as it were a sleeping Dog and the Womb doth thereby assume a cruelty and presently compels the innocent Woman to repent of its madness And moreover also it oftentimes reflects its fury on the very Powers of the mind by which it had been long since provoked that it may boast of its absolute command over all things For the Idea's of the passions of the Soul as oft as they are importunate on the Womb if they are introduced into the angryable Faculty of the Womb and do pierce it they as forreign and hateful ones do straightway disturb it from whence the impatient Womb doth stir up it self into diverse furies Which thing also even from thence was not hid to Plato while he named the Womb a furious living Creature In the next place although from the fury of the Womb as well the proper Cook-room thereof doth labour as of other parts laid hold of by it and from thence diverse excrements are stirred up being made remarkable by the seminal Idea's of furies yet those same excrements are only products That is although madnesses arisen from conceptions do bring forth their foolish Idea's and do decypher them in the strange tables of excrements by the inordinacy of a part of them even as the madness of Dogs doth pass over into the Spittle yet by a removal of the occasional product although Diseases may be allayed or eased the fury of the Womb is not Cured Because that product being taken away was a latter
now I directly behold or cast my eye on the Affects of the Womb For from the Effect I am induced to believe that in enchantments the most powerful part of the whole tragedy doth depend on the Idea's of the bond-slaves of the Devil and so that they do originally proceed from conceptions even as I have demonstrated in its place because those things which naturally do help those that are enchanted do also cure the passions of the Womb and on the other hand but that the Womb which else is quiet is stirred up into animosity or wrathfulness by anger and grief is so without controversie that it is known to poor Women and old Women themselves Neither doth any thing hurt the virtues implanted in the Womb which is plainly a non-being as a cogitation is unless it be made most nearly to approach into the form of a Being at the original of all motions in us But I have endeavoured by a long tract of Words to convince of this progress in Idea's Wherefore also I am constrained to ascribe the like nativity in enchantments For indeed although Odoriferus and grateful Spices do weaken many Women yet any ill smelling and stinking things ought not therefore to cure them For Example For Assa or the smell of fuming Sulphur do not refresh distempers of the Womb as they do stink for neither do they alwayes equally refresh all Women alike or simply but because they restrain or slay the Idea's that are imprinted without the Womb So although sweet things do weaken them therefore bitter things as such do cure them For I have taught first of all that contraries do not exist in Nature Wherefore an argument from the contrary sense although it may be of value in the Law Yet not in Nature because the contentions and brawlings of the Law are not found in Nature Neither is it to be thought in the mean time that the Remedies of the Womb do consist in that which is temperate as it were the middle of Extreams the refuge of qualities mutually broken being taken away from extreams but altogether in a free Arcanum So indeed that although no Simple be an unpartaker of the first Qualities yet things appropriated do least of all cure the Affects of the Womb in respect of those Qualities But such a kind of Arcanum is the fire or sweetness of the Sulphur of the Vitriol of Venus or Copper and likewise the volatile tincture of Coral the Essence of Amber the Agath-stone or Jet the Nettle with a white-hooded Flower that doth not sting the black Gooseberry Ballote or the kind of Horehound so called Rue Southern-wood Sage Nep the berries of Elder of Wallwort or dwarfe-Elder Assa-fetida the wart or hillock of a Horses Ham Golden shining Coral therefore is a stony Herb or an herbie Stone born for the destruction of Sorceries For even as Sorceries are made by an Idea irregularly transplanted in filths to wit the which Idea was already before seminal in its own Spirit yet while it it inserted in filths it wanders into a Poyson So indeed the seminal virtue in Coral is inserted into a stonifying matter If therefore there be he who can seperate the vegetable part from the stone of Coral now an endowment of Nature it attained or the Idea of that Simple which doth vindicate and transplant the Idea's transplanted into a Poyson For I have observed how unvoluntarily the Devil could endure this Stone Because I knew a Noble-man enchanted on whom although Bracelets of Beads of Coral were strongly bound yet they would presently burst asunder from thence The like whereof doth occur in that because Women being ill at ease bright golden Coral doth presently wax pale as it were taking compassion on them the which notwithstanding doth resume itâ— former brightness of redness with the health of the Womans Womb. But not any kind of Simples do equally cure the enchanted as neither all Affects of the Womb alike for all particular Simples have their own Endowments their Idea's and do take away hurtful Idea's their compeers To wit Southern-wood Sage and Rue do drive away the Idea's of Fear Mugwort the Nettle Ballote and black Gooseberry do prevail in cases contracted from Grief But Assa Castoreum the Elder berries the Essence of the Agath or Jet in cases caused from Anger But Nep Valerian and Venus or Maiden-Hair in cases resulting fâ—â—m the Idea of Hatred Even as Saint Johns Wort and the third Phu in Idea's that are â—â—l of Fury So an Hare dried the Stones of some Beasts being dryed in the Smoak the rod of a Stage Agnus Castus or the Willow Vitex and Amber in Idea's bred through the suggestion of Lust But the mineral Electrum Coral prepared and the greater Arcanums do after some sort ascend unto a universality whereunto the Secundines of a first-born Male the Gaule of a Snake c. do most nearly approach Truly the greater Secrets perpared by Art or things appropriated by natural Endowments do scarce leave any one destitute Furthermore how much the method proposed doth deviate from the Schooles let themselves judge for they do acknowledge the Disease of the Womb after a rustical manner To wit they have only known the inordinacies of the Menstrues and the Gonorrhea's or Whites because they refer the inordinate lusting of the Woman with Child and stranglings of the Womb among Sumptomes For they weigh the retaining of the Menstrues by a stoppage and are vainly intent to Cure it by opening things For they have been so accustomed not to heale or make sound their Patients that the name of Sanation hath departed into Oblivion and Curation hath obtained its place For so they will have immoderate Courses to be cured by an inordinate opening of the Veins it being an undistinct observance with the common sort In the next place it is a thing full of Mockery that they do endeavour only by Phlebotomy to help as well the retained as the immoderate flowing Menstrues In those being retained they do only cut a Vein of the Ancle but 〈◊〉 their inordinate Fluxes the liver Vein in the Arm In both Cases I say they do draw out venal Blood in equal quantity because they have sometimes found that Nature being as well full of Danger and Fear as empty of Blood and Strength hath now and then desisted for a space from the begun fury of a Flux Perhaps it shall be alike if they shall make an Horse that is too wanton to halt through hurting of a Tendon But the Menstrues failing the Schooles have now forgotten Obstructions and as if the suppressing thereof did involue a necessary Plethora or abounding of Humours they command a Vein to be cut the which is to have fought against the Effect but not against the obstructing or stopping Cause They know not I say that the Menstrues being detained do offend through a fury of the ruling power or faculty They sometimes give Solutives repeatedly to drink and those things which are feigned
because it is that which is besides and against the appointed government of its own Life Wherefore from a sufficient account or enumeration I conclude that before the Apple was eaten neither could the Mind have generated an immortal Soul neither that it intended to generate a mortal one nor indeed any seminal disposition or substance of Seed And therefore neither had there for that Cause been made any Generation by Man neither had he felt in himself any inclination to generate And in this respect the Cause of natural Death of necessity lay hid in the eating of the Apple being unfolded by carnal Generation in which Generation there is a seminal Disposition co-operating for the obtaining of a mortal Soul by request and that Generation doth prevent and pervert the intention of the Creator about the propagation of his own Image So indeed the mortal Soul hath through a brutal Concupiscence of the Flesh produced for it self a Seed dispositive unto a Soul which is to perish after the manner of Bruit-beasts To wit the which Soul hath also introduced with it a brutal condition of mortality For Death was undoubtedly co-natural unto Bruits from their Creation the which indeed have only mortal Souls But it is lawful to confirm by the rule of a supposed falshood that we are bound by Faith to believe that indeed the Mind is created immediately by God but not to be kindled by the Soul of the Parents even as Light being taken from Light For if the Soul of the Person generated be made of the Soul of the Generater this shall be either from the Soul of the Father or from the Soul of the Mother or from both but none of these is true Therefore the Soul of the Person generated is in no wise made or derived from the Spirit of the Parents It is proved as to the first For truly seeing the Speech is of the progress of Nature the which therefore ought to be ordinary And therefore also that thing should constantly happen in Bruit-beasts but this doth not happen therefore not from the progress of Nature The subsumption is proved by a Young from its Father being a Dormouse and its Mother a Coney to wit the which except that its Taile is like a Dormouse is wholly a Coney as well within as without also in its Skin and Haires But if any Faculty of its Soul should issue from the Father it should of necessity have a fatherly and not a motherly Faculty But by the Example proposed the contrary is manifest therefore not from the Father Yet neither therefore are the Souls of off-springs begged from the Mothers Soul For otherwise from that which the Soul proceedeth from the same likewise and at least the formative Faculty also should proceed And by consequence off-springs should not only alwayes be made of the femal Sex and alwayes like unto their Mother but also a Mola or Lump of Flesh should never be made where the Faculty or Virtue of the Seed of the Male flows down as barren As neither should the imagination of a Woman great with Child transchange the Young being already formed in its Mothers Womb into a monstrous strange yea and bruital Figure because the Seed now having a Soul borrowed from the Parent could not be any longer subject unto the foolish imagination of the Mother especially while as the Young is now nourished in its own Orbe and Kitchin The same Argument also prevaileth in supposing that the Soul was begotten from the Soul of both Parents for whatsoever is denyed disjunctively may truly be denyed copulatively Whither also this conclusion hath regard to wit that that being granted the Seed should now be actually soulified from its Beginning And likewise that of two Souls a certain composed and mixt soulified and Spiritual Light should be made which resisteth a formal simplicity by reason of a composed duality Therefore the single homogeniety of the Soul is averse unto duality and to a heterogeneal composition of Souls Whence I conclude That the Soul is not so much as in Bruits derived from the Parents and by so much the less in Man Wherefore all Souls are immediately created by the very Life it self and Father of Lights who will give his own honour of Creator unto no Creature Wherefore from hence it is easie to be seen that Man is not able to produce an immortal Mind nor the divine Image And so also from hence it is manifest that the first intention of the Creator was not that Man had in any respect immingled himself in generating but that the alone hand of the Creator had perfected every Young which alone createth all Souls but especially and singularly that Soul which should thenceforth be eternal the which he by an essential ordination had directed unto his own Image Lastly it must needs be that a true Image or Likenesse can never naturally be made but by a proper Engraver But he is no proper Engraver who hath not perfectly known him whose Image he intends to Engrave But Man was created after the Image and Likeness of God yet he cannot know God as neither express any Image of him in Mind or Word the which ignorance every one ought to confess Therefore he cannot be a proper Engraver of the divine Image And therefore whatsoever Image of him he should frame it should be plainly Monstrous and of a finite Duration And by consequence Man in the intention of the Creator was not made that he should generate a man In Nature indeed every Spirit of generating Seed doth comprehend because it doth contain the Idea of the thing to be generated But Man seeing he is the immediate and true Image of God cannot by any means transfuse the divine Image into his own Seed the which in himself and out of himself he is plainly ignorant of But seeing that in Nature a like thing generates its like Man may imprint on his Seed the Image of a humane Body made also after the Image of God Therefore a Man which generates may imprint on his Seed the seal or shadow of himself but not the Image of God and substance of the immortal Mind And moreover I have demonstrated elsewhere that all other Souls are only formal Lights but not substances Therefore if the Mind ought or could be able to produce the Image of God now the Mind should either dease to be the very Image of God it self or God should not be the Creator of the Mind Wherefore the pure Essence of the Image of God did by all manner of means require in its conception of creating or generating God himself the immediate Creator and one only Father of it who is in the Heavens and besides whom there is no Paternity in the Heavens Otherwise there is a carnal Paternity or Fatherliness in Man and Bruits and therefore the Text saith Honour thy Father And another Text That there is no Paternity but in the heavenly Father Therefore it is denoted that there is
in the Womb It is false therefore that Nature is every where circular Because she is that which would every where give satisfaction to his ends who is cloathed by the glorious Work-man of Nature and not by Nature For neither after another manner is there a re-bent Reflexion put into the seminal erected Spirit by the Generater but it proceeds from the Finger of him who disposeth of all things sweetely from end even to end Therefore the Seed being conceived the Womb forthwith shuts its neather Gate least any forreign thing should rush into it which might disturb its Conception In the next place the Vessels of the Womb which are subject unto its command as if a Door-keeper were added are also shut above because then a new Common-wealth ariseth in the Womb as a new family-administration of a future Young and therefore also a singular Kitchin is erected in the confining Vessels Even so that the Embryo is a good while nourished and increaseth not by the venal Blood of the Liver but by pure and fined arterial Blood But presently after as soon as this Kitchin is furnished for the Embryo which is about to live in his own proper Orbe the Womb prepars venal Blood which it may hand-forth unto the Embryo and therefore whatsoever less profitable thing it meets withal it is brushed out So that in that whole Motion the Mother for the most part is ill at ease For truly seeing Filths can no longer be expurged through the emunctory of the Womb and the which neither are able to expect the Maturity of Delivery the Filths go backward into the Veins they obtain the condition of an Excrement and are thrust forth by Vomit and other Sinks That which is not equally done in Bruits seeing they want Menstrues and do not admit of an unseasonable Copulation Again the Conception of Men was not from the first intention of the Creator after the manner whereby we are conceived in Sins At length also because for Bruit-beasts pure arterial Blood was not equally required for Nourishment Therefore the teeming Woman alone shall pay for the Itch of one Copulation through a cruel expiation of many Punishments beyond Bruits The Embryo therefore or imperfect Young is at first nourished by arterial Blood prepared in the neighbour Kitchins of the Womb until that after the first fourty dayes he obtaining a living Soul lives of his own right But the preparatory Kitckin is exercised in the spleen-form Flesh whereby the secundine cleaveth to the Womb Therefore Succours for the Young are slow and oftentimes void and also those that are administred to the Mother by way of the Mouth because that before their entrance unto the Embryo all things are recocted And again in the Young it self before they can augment the same But the Infant being born before he is fit for bearing of the more hard Meats he is accustomed to the more gentle ones For so he is a good while fed with arterial Blood which leaves no Dungs be-hinde it For those things which fall from a little Infant that is born presently after his first Cry are the Reliques of the Blood of the Liver the which for the most part is not first admitted into the aforesaid Kitchins but after the third forty dayes And these indeed are the Excrements which do ripen and provoke the necessity of travail or delivery But moreover the Spirit that was once implanted in the Seed being sunk into the Seeds doth presently if not fore-know the necessities of the Body at least-wise perfectly learn them and afterwards draws unto it self a Consanguineal or nearly allyed Spirit or Nourishment by a certain Harmony of Affinity At length the Womb feeling the Maturity of the Young by co-wrinckling contracteth it self which the Antients have called Striving to expel the Young or Off-springs For I have oft-times with-held Abortion threatned and begun But sometimes I could not But I have known that I have detained it as oft as the abortion should be caused from a Symptomatical animosity without a fore-ripe expulsive Faculty to wit from the digression of the Womb And the Remedy did operate by restraining and sleepifying appeasing and pacifying the aforesaid Furies of the Womb But I could not prevent Abortion or miscarying as oft as there was a fall of the Mother from an high Place and much disturbance of Affrighting Grief Anger c. they being inordinate things And likewise if the Young had a remarkable Monstrousness which adds no slugguish Spur unto Expulsion Or if the Young die or pines away or failes through a notable Weakness And likewise if the Mother being strongly smitten with astonishment before the Young could live in its own Quarter hath with-drawn the Arterial Spirit unto her self The which if it shall straightway return from thence yet it finds the same Young as it were in a sound whereunto as unto a Plant so tender Life is scarce re-connexed By this means the semi-vital Conception is now and then wont to miscarry into a hard lump of Flesh or a foolish Branch But that thing scarce happens through a defect of the Fathers Seed because that a barren or foolish Seed is either not attracted and so neither is it conceived or if it be attracted it through a foolish Lust of the Womb soon fals out again and frustrates Conception But the Seed degenerates into a hard Lump of Flesh by reason of external Incidencies lighting upon the Seed whereby Hippocrates saith That Seeds are withdrawn whither they would not Therefore a hard Lump or Moale is made while as the Spirit is funk into the Body of the Seed and is spoiled of a humane Figure yet retaining its former growing Faculty The drowning or sinking therefore alone is able to command the Figure out of the forming Spirit if being to long sleepifyed within it becomes fast asleep But although the dreaming Vision did scarce fill up the space of halfe a quarter of an hour yet it at once represented all the successive Periods of Generation as it were in a Glass of the Thing To wit its Moments Fluxes Motions Aspects Diversities of interchanges and also its Errours stood collected into Unity But I being awaked alass how I sighed at the likeness of our modern propagation with that of Bruit-beasts And therefore Adam not undeservedly bewailed the Death of Abel for the space of an Age He grieving the while at the hateful bruitish Generation and knew not his Wife in all that time As well weighing that Nature being now defiled in its Root was to suffer original and of necessity durable Miseries CHAP. CVIII A Lunar Tribute SEing Woman onely among living Creatures the Ape perhaps excepted suffers Menstrues or monthly Issues and seemeth for this cause to have experience of the operations of the Moon-star but since the Schools do prattle of very many things concerning the Menstrues as if it were the ordinary nourishment of the Young Surely it hath behoved me to discover their boastings in the Treatise
of Long Life For first of all the Moon doth not heap up or expel this venal Blood although the purgation of the Womb be co-incident with the course of the Moon For that coincident is unto both terms or limits by accident for otherwise if that purgation of the Woman should be from the Moon it self verily all Women should be Menstruous on the same day and at least-wise those which should dwell in the same Climate Or at least-wise all young Virgins should likewise suffer the same with the new of the Moon which is false For if some Ships do follow one Pretorian or chief leading Ship which in a dark night hath a Lanthorn in stead of a Flag The Lanthorn indeed affords onely a Sign of their following but the Wind Stern and Governours of the Stern shall be the immediate efficient Cause of their following So the Moon like a Torch finisheth the task of her circle in four weeks and six hours So also a Woman for Reasons straightway to be added For the Woman ought to encrease and nourish her conceived generation from her own blood unto a just stature of the Young and to feed the Infant being brought forth with her own blood being turned into milk Therefore she had need of a greater plenty of venal Blood and therefore while it should not be supt up for those ends it should also become superfluous and by consequence be voided or expelled Yea although a Woman eats and drinks much less then a Man yet she abounds with more blood That is the shop of the venal Blood makes more arterial Blood in the Woman than in Men even out of a more sparing meat and Drink From whence it of necessity in the next place follows That in the Woman more is turned into a profitable nourishment and in the Man that more is changed into excrements But how it is manifest what or of what sort that superfluous blood may be let all know that the venal Blood of Man ought to be renewed in a space of daies wherein the Moon measures all her particular courses through the Zodiack For that is the space wherein the venal Blood is kept in its Balsam it being longer reserved it is corrupted For truly he that aboundeth with Blood it must needs be that by nourishing he spends the same on the family of Life or that he transchangeth it into fatness phlegms of the Latex or other drosses as Sweat or diseasie Excrements For the Woman hath small pores the fleshy Membrane under her upper skin doth enrich her with much fat neither therefore can she consume so much Blood superabounding in her as she daily makes or concocts The bound therefore of the course of the blood being finished that which is barren becomes all superfluous the which therefore Nature is busied in casting forth and sequesters it unto the veins of the Womb as unto its appointed emunctories For the blood departs unto those proper places nor those likewise strange ones because for the ends already declared the Menstrues is the superfluity of the Blood of the Woman alone And it becomes burdersome by the very title whereby it is superfluous And as yet by so much the more because then it puts off the vital Spirit no othewise than as some Wines after the Years end become strengthless For these ends therefore and by these means the venal Blood is made an Excrement afterwards a poyson and attaines worse faculties in going But at length it assumes the horrid properties of a new dead carcase For therefore the Menstrues of the first dayes is more infected than that which flows forth in the following dayes For although the expulsion of the Menstrues be the proper office of the Veins Yet the collection of the same even as also its renewing and sequestring do belong unto the Monarchal Archeus of the Womb. Therefore indeed that which is most hateful is the more speedily cast out of doors whereby it first separated it self from the good blood and for this cause it being the longer detained about the Veins of the Womb for that cause also it is the more poyson some In the next place although this Poyson masks it self with the shew of venal Blood yet the favour of the vital Balsam being by degrees laid aside it ascending unto the malignity of a cadaverous or stinking Liquor assumeth the disposition of a poyson and hath degenerated from the former nature and properties of Blood The which handy-craft operation proveth For truly a Towel that is dipped in the Menstrues if it be plunged into boyling water it contracts an un-obliterable spot for the future and the which at least-wise in the third washing falls out of the Towel it being made full of holes no otherwise than if it should be corroded by the sharp Spirit of Sulphur That which after another manner is a forreigner to the bloud of a Man whether it shall flow forth through the Nostrils Wounds Hemerhoides or Bloody-flux or next if it shall fall out from Ulcers like a more wan clot From whence also it is manifest that the Menstrues hath an aluminous tinging property any besides a cadaverous sharp poyson fit for gnawing or erosion But as it once enjoyed the Seal of the Archeus of Life whereof it being afterwards deprived it obtains a fermental faculty full of a powerful contagion as also hostile sharpnesses For that Blood through its divers degrees of malignity stirs up diverse passions within on the miserable Woman For when as it being once sequestred from the other blood unto the Inns of the Veins of the Womb hath received the aforesaid sharpness of malignity and from thence is supped back again into the branches of the hollow vein by a retrograde motion of revulsion which is made through large cuttings of a vein or symptomatical wrothfulnesses which are the stirrers up of Fluxes of the Womb it causeth Swoonings Heart-beatings Convulsions and oft-times horrible stranglings But if the Menstruous Blood being not yet derived unto the Veins of the Womb or plainly severed from the rest and so neither hath as yet had its utmost mischief or corruption It is detained with a certain inordinacy and stirs up divers conspicuous Symptomes in many places From what hath been said before therefore it is manifest That Women great with young Nurses weak or sick Persons blood-less Women those that are become Lean those that are not of a ripe age and swift or circular movers do want Menstrues because also Superfluities It is also false that all Menstruous Blood without distinction is poysonsom or hurtful And likewise that we are nourished and grow big in the Womb by the Menstrues For truly the venal Blood of the Woman hath not the condition of Menstrues before that untill it being unfit for nourishment is enfeebled or deprived of Life and brought bound unto the sink For neither doth he who drinks Wine drink Vinegar although this be made of that As neither is he fed with Excrements who eateth
Meats Yea which is more The Blood which is avoided in or presently after delivery is not Menstruous through the defect of its condition because it is not superfluous from a fore-going course of the Moon And then also because it is not heaped up fleshy not aluminous or tart not staining linnen Cloathes nor separated from the whole nor banished unto the places of the Womb for expulsion For that bloud which is plentifully voided in time and after delivery and the which being retained a doating Fever doth soon after threaten death is indeed venal blood yet not the Menstrues of the Mother For it is left by the Young who seeing from his quickening he lived in his own Orbe had a kitchin out of himself in the Vessels of the Womb. Wherefore it hath taken to it self another property than that of the Mother and than that of the Menstrues For that guest hath indeed the shape of Menstruous Blood Yet being an adoptive of another Family and become a forreigner to the Mother it is seriously to be expelled surely no otherwise than as the Secundines themselves But being omitted and left behind it is corrupted and brings on death But seeing that in a Woman great with Child there is no Menstrues at all by consequence neither is that Young nourished but with the pure arterial blood of the Mother and afterwards with pure venal blood being also first refined in its kitchins Therefore the Schools are deceived who teach That the small Pox or Measels are due almost to every mortal man by reason of the tribute of Menstruous nourishment For they observed that there was seldom any smitten twice with that Disease and perhaps seldom excused from it Wherefore they searching into the common Cause from whence the Young should be nourished in the beginning have referred the Effect on the Menstrues But in all things they without the knowledge of things have mutually subscribed to each other and have slidden into Fables and Conjectures For first of all they have not considered that it is almost impossible for any one to be made free from that Disease if all are alike indifferently nourished with Menstrues And then because they should be afflicted as it were at one certain and appointed term of the Crisis I confess indeed that the Measels do spring from a Poyson and draw a Poyson with them infect the blood with their ferment and defile others that stand by but especially Children and that the internal essence of Poysons is not demonstrable by a former Cause and therefore we measure the Property of a Poyson by the Effects even as a Tree by his Fruits 1. Therefore The Poyson of the Measels is proper onely to humane kind 2. That Nature is prone to the framing of that Poyson 3. But that it is kindled about the Stomack and so in the Center of the Body 4. That the parts being once besieged with this Poyson do most swiftly repulse that Poyson from themselves towards the superficies of the Body 5. That the shops of that Poyson after that they have once felt the tyranny thereof being afterwards thorowly instructed with a hostile averseness and horror do with great fore-caution prevent or hinder the generation thereof even from the very beginning least they should even at first unwarily fall thereinto Therefore the Poyson is made in Man but not co-bred in him from the Menstrues But of what quality that Poyson may be cannot be described by name because it hath not a proper name out of its effects It is sufficient in this place that the Menstrues cannot be drawn into a Cause for the Distempers aforesaid At first therefore The Menstrues offends in its matter by reason of its abounding alone And then it undergoes a degree that the first may be wherein that blood is superfluous from the foregoing course of the Moon But a Second degree is as soon as it is separated from the rest of blood But a Third degree is while as designed it hath resided about the Vessels of the Womb. A Fourth is that which hath stuck some good while in the same place and hath entered into the way of death At length the last degree is while as it now hath slidden forth as a dead Carcass and into the Air. Therefore the Schooles offend while as by cutting of a Vein they are busied in succouring of Virgins who in respect of their Menstrues do feel an heart-beating or trembling without distinction For although the Menstrues of the first degree appeaseth heart-beatings or pantings by a revulsive blood-letting yet in the third degree of the Menstrues I have fore-told it to our chief Physitians to be a destructive Remedy Because that the Veines of the Arme or Hams being emptied I have observed the Menstrues to be drawn backwards from the neighbouring places into the Veins And truly those Veins which do not remain emptied but which are filled again by a communion of continuation So also after great heart-beatings and pauses of intermitted pulses or after most sharp paines of the sides following from the Womb to wit by reason of an aluminous Poyson of the third degree Virgins have suddenly died by reason of Phlebotomy by me instituted at unawares In the first degree indeed the abundance of venal blood is taken away But it is the less evil although a part of the barren blood be left surviving Truly I had rather to help Nature in her sequestration and expulsion than by drawing of undistinct blood to have weakened Nature Moreover that is to be noted That although I have distinguished Diseases by the Ranks of Digestions yet I have scarce made mention of the Menstrues Because the Menstrues is neither digested nor is it a superfluity of Digestion and so is of another condition For at first it offends with a good abundance and then with a burdensom superfluity presently after it is deprived of Life and becomes a Poyson yet it cures Swine which are inclining into the Leprosie even as Horses straightway which were contracted or convulsive from unseasonable Drink if they drink up but a small quantity of Menstrues And likewise the poysonsom and true Menstrues of another Woman being administred in a few drops hath presently strangled a Woman labouring with a Flux of the Womb. But the blood which is at length avoided in plenty in Fluxes of the Womb being drunk in a few drops stayeth those Fluxes Furthermore because Woman only the Ape perhaps excepted doth suffer Menstrues and although the Menstrues do accuse of an abundance alone yet that the Cow her Dug being dried suffers not Menstrues otherwise she flowes down with very much Milk denoting that the abounding of venal blood is indeed the material Cause but not therefore the final and the which therefore I have not reduced among natural Causes For that the Almighty alone encloseth all the final Causes of all things within himself who sweetly disposeth of all things according to the unsearchable Abysse of his own Judgements
Virtue which the Stalk or mossie yellow tuft thereof hath not and that Virtue in the Leaf is not from the three first things but from its native Life which when it s destroyed then it hath other Virtues as suppose thou a grain of Corn which nourisheth in its first Life the which if it looseth then it fructifies And then thirdly there is a magical Virtue which proceedeth from the Phantasie of the Life of the whole entire composure that is in Bruites and in the external Man which being now spiritual is more absolute than the former nevertheless not yet advanced unto the highest pitch of Efficacy notwithstanding now and then through much exciting by a strong Phantasie introduced by an Entity it ascends unto a great height and as near as may be imitates the true Magick of the inward Man But moreover the Soul of every Bruit-beast hath a Power of Creating a real Entity or Beingness and through the Will of dismissing the same to a far distant Object The Bruit of this sort is Magical as the Basilisk the Dog many Fishes described by Olaus c. Such also is the Virtue inhabiting in the Blood of many Animals For from hence the holy Scripture saith That the Soul is in the Blood though hunted out of the Veins and although boyled by Fire perhaps also being plainly putrified through a keeping warm Last of all there is a magical Virtue being as it were abstracted from the Body which is wrought by the stirring up of the more inward Power of the Soul from whence there are made most potent Procreations most famous Impressions and most strong Effects Indeed Nature is on every side a Magitianess and acts by her own Phantasie and because by how much the more Spiritual her Phantasie is by so much the more powerful it is therefore also the Denomination of Magick is truly proportionable or concordant Every magical Virtue almost stands in need of excitement for the lowest sort wants an excitement by a foregoing luke-warmth Indeed a certain Vapour or spiritual Air is stirred up by reason whereof the Phantasie which profoundly sleeps is awakened and there begins a skirmishing of the corporeal Spirits as a Mean which is that of Magnetism and it is excited by a foregoing touch But that of the highest sort which is that of Bruits and Men is stirred up from an intellectual Conception and indeed that of the inward Man is not excited but by the holy Spirit and by his gift the Cabal but that of the External Man is stirred up by a strong Imagination by a dayly and heightned Speculation yea and in Witches by Satan But the magical Virtue of the out-chased Blood wherein the Soul dwelleth which is as yet made to lurk in Potentia or by way of possibility only is excited either by a more strong ascending Imagination conceive it of the Magitian making use of the Blood as a Mean and establishing his kindled Entity thereon or conceive it through the ascending Phantasie of the Weapon Salve the excitress of the Property lurking in the Blood or by a foregoing Appointment or Disposition of the Blood unto Corruption to wit whereby the Elements are disposed unto Separation and the Essences which know not how to putrifie and the essential Phantasies which lay hid in the Power of the Properties come forth into Action The Phantasie therefore of any Subject whatsoever hath obtained a strong Appetite to the Spirit of another thing for the moving I say some certain thing in place for the attracting expelling or repulsing thereof And there and not elsewhere we acknowledge Magnetism as the natural magical Endowment of that thing firmly implanted in it by God There is therefore in this respect a certain formal Property separated from Sympathetical and abstruse or hidden Qualities because the motive Phantasie of these Qualities doth not directly flow unto a local Motion but only unto an alterative Motion of the Object Let every Magnetism therefore be either Sympathetical or Antipathetical yet every Sympathy shall not be Magnetical We returning to our scope proposed I think ere this that it is well understood that there is not only in the Blood a phantasie and magical Appetite but also in the Humours Meats and Excrements since the various off-spring of Diseases doth also make manifest that thing For teeming Women desire strange Meats and Virgins through a natural sting or fury of the exorbitant Womb do with paleness and speediness digest what they desire not indeed by reason not a near affinity of humane Nature requiring that particular Meat but they being seduced by the forreign Phantasie of those Humours thus foolishly over-powering them which Filths being expelled we have oftentimes restored a sudden Health to their hurt or vitiated Appetites Or also we have restrained them by fully satisfying of the mad Phantasie of the same Humours Therefore the Blood hath its own Phantasie in it the which because it there more powerfully flourisheth than in other things therefore doth the Scriptnre by a high Elogy or Publishment of praise call the Blood as yet boyled and ready to be eaten an animated or soulified thing And because this same Phantasie therein is capable of Derivation for that reason indeed the Manners Gestures and Conditions of the Grand-father shine forth in his posthume Nephew Nobility drew its Original from well deserving Virtue Hence Nobility should be suspected to be without desert increased by a continued Propagation of the Stock or Family unless the Manners and Virtues of the Ancestours should probably be hoped to shine forth in their modern Nephews Doth not also the enmity conceived betwixt the Wolfe and Sheep remain in their Skins Wherefore the stubborn Phantasie of an Animal is imprinted not only on his Blood after Death But also whosoever is covered with Bed-cloaths made of the Skin of a Gulo or Glutton it is a living Creature frequent in Swethland and of a most devouring Nature is constrained to dream continually of Feasts devouring and laying Snares for or catching living Creatures therein to wit according to the Disposition of that Animal while living and so that only by an external covering the Phantasie of the Beast which when once alive was entertained in his skin is derived into a Man that sleeps under it Therefore by the Ministery of the Phantasie of the Blood it come to pass that the out-chased Blood being received on the Weapon is introduced into the magnetick Unguent For then the Phantasie of the Bloods being otherwise as yet drowsie and slow as to Action being stir'd up by the Virtue of the magnetical Unguent and there finding the Balsamical and Medicinal Virtue of the Unguent wisheth that the quality induced into it might be bestowed on it self throughout and from thence by a spiritual Magnetism to draw out all the strange Tincture of the Wound the which seeing it cannot fitly enough effect by it self it implores the aide of the Moss Blood Fat and Mummy which are conjoyned together into
its coming not to come and that a strange-born creature and monster is substituted in its place Of the contingencies whereof daily and unvoluntary experiences are full which power is granted to be given to a woman great with child yet not that therefore in other women the images of conceipts are not likewise brought unto the womb wherein an embryo doth not inhabite For I have taught in a particular treatise that the disturbances of men are framed in the midriffs about the mouth of the stomach to wit that in men they from thence ascend unto the heart but in a woman that they are more readily sent unto the womb because a woman doth naturally appoint vital inspirations for her Young And so every commotion of the midriffs in a woman hath continually respect unto the womb whether a Young be present or not Whosoever therefore much disturbs a woman with grief c. from a deliberate minde he willingly sends into her a disease And he that molests a woman great with young let him know that he hurts the mother and off-spring Hence maides about the years of maturity if they are vexed with the conceipts of difficulties they are wont continually to decypher the sides of their womb with the vain Idea's of conceptions and for the most part they are made unto themselves the Aâ—â—horesses of various sumptoms for inordinate lusting Because the womb doth not suffer its tranquility to be taken away by forreign images without punishment But a man formes his images in his midâ—iffs as well those of the desirable as of the wrothful faculty so that madnesse is therefore not undeservedly called hypochondrial and that thing happens no otherwise than as in a woman but he transmitts the Idea's of conceipts more freely unto the heart and brain For a certain man exspecting that on the morrow morning a Major would be sent for his houshold goods sitting sorrowful all the night with his head leaned on the palm of his hand in the morning had that side of his head grey in what part his temples had touched his hand And so the hand of a woman with child translates her own exorbitances unto her womb and the hand of a man his feares even into the skin of his head At leastwise from hence it is manifest that there is a true growth and nourishment of the haires and not a vain signature of colours but that they are not in-bred by an application expelling from behind and then that the perturbation in men is much akâ—â— to that of a woman although far more infirme I have taught also elsewhere that the efficacy of disturbances consisteth in the spleen Wherefore antiquity hath accounted Saturn the principle and parent of the starry gods also the highest of the wandring stars to wit the which should cast his influence downwards on the rest but that the rest should in no wise reflect upwards because the stars are believed to conspire for the commodities of sublunary things but not upwards Therefore they called Saturn the origina of life and the beginning of conceptions or generations yea and they named him the devourer of a young child poynting out hereby that the images framed by the desirable faculty do make seeds fruitful and also the Inns of digestions in us even as when they are exorbitant they consume the new or tender blood and enforce very many diseases on us Therefore the imagination of the spleen hath the first violent assaults which are gâ—aâ—tted not to be in our power Saturn therefore was feigned to be as it were without a beginning but Jupiter the chief off-spring thereof casting down his father from his seat signified the brightnesse of reason subduing the first assault of imagination But an image formed by imagination is presently in the spleen cloathed with the vital spirit and assumeth it whence an Idea is fortified for the execution of works for what person is he who hath not sometimes felt disturbances anguishes and the occasions of sighing about the orifice of his stomach in which part the spleen is most sensitive even as also the touching in the fingers ends Is not the appetite taken away from an hungry man by a sorrowful message Be it observeable in this place that although the essential disposition of things aprehended in time of the perturbation be plainly unknown unto the woman with child yet she wholly formeth and figureth the same in her young while as without the trunk of the trees she frameth a cherry in the flesh in an instant conteining the internal essence and the knowledges of a seminal cherry It s no wonder therefore if that a terrour from the plague frameth an Idea of the plague from whence the plague it self doth presently bud although the sensitive soul of man be ignorant of the essence of the plague Heer an open field is made manifest to prove that the knowledges or Idea's of all things are formed in us by the power of the sensitive soul yet that they lay obscured in the immortal mind which we believe to have been present with Adam while as he put right names on the bruit beasts For if the conceipt of a woman being allured by the overflowing of some certain perturbation can decypher the inward dispositions of plants or animals yea sometimes with a total transmutation of her young it must needs be that in the mind it self as in the essential engravement of the divine image an essential notion at least of sublunary things doth inhabite only being depressed and deformed in the impurity of nature and spot of original sin otherwise the sensitive soul cannot do strange things which it knows not and hath not and so there is need for the immortal mind to have a conflux hereunto it being stirred up by perturbations It is a very obscure and difficult way whereby Adeptists by no help of books do strive by seeking to obtain some former light of sciences And therefore also they call it the labour of wisdom and Paracelsus esteems it to be ten-fold easier than to have learned Grammer Yet Picus is of opinion that unlesse the operater makes use of a mean he will soon die of a Binsica or drynesse of the brain That the spirit of life will be diminished by reason of a daily continuance of speculations Whatsoever that may be at leastwise the ignorance of causes hath neglected most things and the helpings of the sick have been exspected in vain But I have discussed in this place of images or likenesses bred in the imagination whereby it may be manifest after what manner every corporeal body proceeds from an invisible and incorporeal Beginning the which they of old affirmed to be fetcht from the intelligible world by the imagination of the foregoing parent in imitating after a certain similitude the creation of the world being from the command of the incomprehensible word Fiat once made of the infinitenesse of a nothing The which afterwards obtained its continuation from the gift of the
shuns the day being frequent in the Silver-Mines of Sardinia and it creeps in secret and through imprudency causeth the Plague to those that sit upon it which poyson indeed is not the true Pestilence but a poysonous pustule or wheal for he subjoyneth that there are hot Fountains near which presently abolish the poyson implanted by the Solifuga So indeed the deadly vapours of Mines are oftentimes called Pestilent ones because they kill the Diggers that â—arry the longer therein But they are wont to make tryal of this danger if a burning Candle being let down into the burrowes of the Mines it be forthwith extinguished neither is it a wonder if besides their poyson they also choak the light of Life if they do extinguish the fiery light of a Candle CHAP. XI The Ferment of the Pestilence COnsider thou how sorrowful a Dog walketh how he refuseth meat and abhorreth drink how many spurs of hatred and conceptions of envy he nourisheth before madnesse Again how that a full force of his conceipt being translated not only into his spittle but into his tooth which is cleanly wiped thorow the garments as it were by its odour alone and by the simple suffumigation of one smell or odour is sufficient to stir up a late and serious madnesse in him that is bitten for the least touch of the tooth in what part the skin layes open and gapeth only in the Epidermis or upper skin however clean the blood leaping forth be washed off neverthelesse it so deriveth the Image of its own madnesse that as the hand of a Woman with Child paints the member of her young so a Dog by the touch of his tooth within the fortieth day will bring madnesse But neither doth it proceed for death onely however the wound be onely in the Epidermis but before death the chief faculties of the mind perish and as Lackeys do presently follow whither they are led aside by the imaginative poyson For that odour of the tooth is as it were a mâ—er nothing an incorporeal Being no otherwise than as the smell of an hoary putrifyed Hogshead or the smell of a foot put into a new shooe that makes a foots-step For a Dog hath known his master a good while by his imprinted footstep and distinguisheth that he passed that way So the odour of a garment or paper being infamous through a pestilential corrupt matter defiles us with a most subtile unperceivâ—able and most thin poyson And it not onely seasons and kils us with a deadly poyson but it also casts down the mind from its seat no otherwise than as the touching of the tooth of a mad Dog under the skin thrusts down the Reason from its majesty and constrains it to follow according to the determined Rule of its own madnesse For the party bitten at a set period of time is sore afraid at the beholding of all liquid things he conceiveth a dog-like envy and wisheth that he could destroy all living and multiply his own madnesse Writers declare that wormes do grow in a Wound in the heaâ— of a Dog At leastwise I deny noâ— but that a Ferment is to be supposed to be in this poyson respecting and affecting the spirits of Imaginations into which the least co-participation of an odour introduceth the Idea of its own Image whereunto our phantasie is constrained to yield yea rather is fully transchanged into that horrid apparition For it is a wonder that a hunting Dog which is the first-born of all the whelps of his Dâ—m doth alone assault and overcome a mad Dog There is in him the natural endowment of an unconquered Imagination even so that if he be bitten by a mad Dog yet he doth not become mad whereas in the mean time all the rest do by biting contract madnesse do fleâ— from a mad Dog neither dare they to defend themselves against this Dog That poyson therefore is the Inne of the madnesse also the forreign guest of Imagination which is overcome by the Imagination of an opposing Soul Therefore from hence we have known that all poysons are in themselves fermental for some destroy the matter onely and together with it the Imaginative Spirit from whence are diseases that have a foolish madnesse connexed unto them but others affect the Spirit onely Such as are those which bring a dog-like madnesse and which bring on foolish madnesses and Catalepses 's or sudden stâ—pefactive congelations to wit The which do not notably melt or alter the body but they draw only the sensitive Spirit into destruction for indeed the Taranâ—â—ta is scarce ever at rest and therefore also he disturbs the man whom he hath stung with a restlesse trouble dFor behold with what an horrid effigies he transplâ—nteth his Imaginations into the man whose skin he hath pierced but even with a slender sting For the vile small and weak creeping Animal by an unperceivable quantity of his poyson infects the whole â—an and presently snatcheth the powers of his mind under his own protection Also surely the odour of a footstep doth fitly square with the Plague being likened unto it For although the Houses are opened in a high place and that well-faâ—ned with the Wind and the infected Ayr of the House doth yield to the Winds yet the Plague doth not therefore cease the third day after but that it is sufficient for taking away the wholecommon people for neither doth the odour of a footstep in the way being exposed to the Winds cease though nothing in quantity unlesse it be washed with Rain or covered with earth for it alwayes represents unto the Dog his own master I remember also that in the Plague at Ostend the very pestilent hoary putrefaction it self is â—wont a little to smell of the soales of shooes burnt and I was wont by that odour to bewray one to be infected with the Plague Furthermore before the Fall every living Creature was subject to man as to its master and its middle life melted and perished in eating before the sight of our Archeus But now even a Whelp hath a predominacy over our life and constrains the free powers of the Soul of mortals under his own infirmities of madnesse For it is a miserable thing for the Image of God thenceforth to be subject to the biting of Insects and that it ought to follow the various Images of the poysonous Ferment of every one And it is a degenerate thing for servile Bruits to season their biting with the Image of Anger with a mad and deadly poyson Alas how piercingly and strongly is the Image of anger sealed And with what a snatching speedinesse doth it passe over unto the spittle Unto how great infirmities is a Woman subject from the hidden Odour of her Womb For with what Exorbitances not to be spoken of is her understanding vexed For truly oftentimes a hoary putrified Odour being communicated from the soales of the feet casteth down our lofty Stature and deprives those that have the Falling-sicknesse of sence
Exhilerating Wines are to be drunk as also the more strong Ales or Beers because that by causing carelessenesses and animosities they shake off grief and terrours But the cold air and winds hurt those that are infected yea that are fearful and sorrowful after any manner or whatsoever is opposite to exhalation and sweat A washed house doth now and then indeed take away the fermental putâ—efaction and contagion and the waâ—ery vapour hurts those that are infected therefore it were first to be dried Forty dayes shutting up although they may increase the fermental putrefaction yet they take away the pestilent poyson as it perisheth of its own accord in that space of time Perhaps therefore custom hath brought over those Quarentanies or forty dayes enclosures for any renovation whatsoever For although swimming or cutting of a vein may seem to diminish the fermental putrefaction yet seeing nature hath laid up the bloud for her treasure it follows that as oft as she shall perceive the bloud of the veins to be taken away the Archeus as it were fearing treachery is disposed unto terrour and draws the rest of the bloud inward to himself and by consequence also it calls the pestilent poyson together with it into the inner chamber which motion is diamentral with or directly opposite to sweat And therefore let as well the cutting of a vein as swimming be destructiue also all loose solving of the belly is to be avoided because so the more crude bloud of the meseraick veins is made to putrifie through the ferment of the solutive mâ—dicine even as elsewhere in the book of Fevers to wit at the evacuation whereof the meseraick veins do â—etch back bloud out of the hollow vein and this out of the small branching veins of the body which motion is diametrically opposite to the curing of the plague Those things which I have â—iâ—herto spoken are of the number of negative preservations or they are admonitory rules of things to be avoided which rules do not yet contain health But among positive preservatiues Amulets challenge the first place to themselves which obtain a proper faculty whether it be for killing of the poyson or else for preventing of the mumial appropriation of the Archeus Both of them indeed are curative in the making of the Pest Next a sudoriferous one follows which is a rooter out of the plague and of its seat by washing off Again the Archeus being grieved and affrighted straightway betakes himself inwards fleeth as it were to his Castle begets sorrow and sighings and the enemy being received within increaseth venemous perplexities Therefore he is to be called forth unto delights and by sudotiferous medicines For sudoriferous or sweat-provoking remedies are all of the same intention and almost of the same weight but at leastwise they differ in the degree of goodnesse In the next place in an Antidote being adjoyned I praise the potion of Hyppocrates whereunto I adde Ginger and the black berries of Ivy because they are Diaphoreticks which are acceptable to the stomach Also antidotes are to be given in generous or rich wine and that presently after food not indeed so much that the sick party may sweat as that his body may be kept in transpiration But let the food be light and little for in every fever and rather in the plague digesti on faileth therefore let the more pure drink supply the room of the more large food For pure or unmixt wine excludeth fear cares sorrow and terrour And therefore also the chief preservative is establâ—shed in confidence Indeed I do not here speak of Christian faith or confidence although in Spirituals there is every where matter of great moment for they also who lay down their life for the sheep do now and then die of the plague other carelesse persons remaining safe For their confidence hath either a defective rottennesse within or some other obstacle The Lord not working miracles but for his hidden Judgments The faith or confidence therefore of which I speak in this place is the natural mean of animosiry or stoutnesse of mind fighting against and strongly resiâ—ting terrour neither is that faith positive I believe but altogether negative not abhorring not fearing yea neither therefore believing that he shall be infected For as a pestiferous terrour hath a suspitious and fearful faith annexed unto it that they have lately conceived something of contagion or do feel a murmuring about the mouth of their stomach so the preservation thereof is a a belief that they have conceived nothing neither therefore is it sufficient that the confidence be not terrifying which is a mean between terrour and animosity but it is required that it be operative by not believing that they shall be insected And that not by an inducement of reason but altogether by a free power of animosity and the meer mother of confidence otherwise children and mad-folks although they have conceived no terrour yet they oftentimes perish by the plague for want of an operating confidence which frames a preservative ot it self For not to believe that one shall be infected works far more strongly than the presumption of fear not onely because a negative destroys more strongly than an affirmative builds up but because it together therewith contains a privation which is stronger than every positive For we are those who proceed from an infinite nothing and therefore our nature doth more strongly apprehend nothing than something itself from whence also it obtaineth rest to it self even as is to be seen in negative Syllogisms wherein the conclusion follows the negative and forsakes also a particular affirmative connexed with it that it may bring it self into quietnesse by a denial For truly the understanding being now degenerate and naturally distrusting it self in understanding this something of things had always rather lay down in not knowing or not being able to know And that is the cause of fluggishness in Sciences Therefore the belief requisite in terrour for preserving is positive and therefore it ought effectively actually and â—fficiently to stand although with hope it concludeth negatively from the weaker part A good man in readily serving those that are infected with contagion if by reason of the piety of his work he hopeth and trusteth more in the goodnesse of the work or of desert than in a free valiant confidence on God he hath a faith con-joyned with hope and it includes an agony of fear and terrour Therefore he naturally undergoes an infection unless he be preserved from elsewhere But the confidence of this place is drawn not so much from Saffâ—on or the exhilarating things of boasters as from the cheerful drink of the more pure wine Women with child also women in child-bed or menstruous women because they are then more restrained under the command of their womb than under the conduct of the universal Archeus therefore they are the more dangerously oppressed with the Pest For truly the Archeus of the womb doth no way obey reason
Ferment of the Plague 11 22 There are double Ferments in nature 112 8 Ferments the causes of transmutation 207 8 The Ferment of the Stomach not from it self ibid. Ferment of thâ— Spleen turns the Spirit of wine wholly into a Salt 733 Fishes made of water proved 115 29 Fishes helpful to Chastity 667 38 Fishes why long lived 684 93 Fishes bring forth without pain 685 95 Fire no Element 48 9 50 1 134 24 138 35 It receives not its nourishment from the Air. 84 16 134 24 It generates nothing 109 34 VVhat its appointed ends are 129 26 Its divers Inclinations taught by Positions 136 31 Its being no substantial Body proved by demonstration 137 33 It is the Vulcan of Arts. 138 38 Actual fire cannot subsist in a mixt Body without consuming it 1049 18 What a Flatus is and its kind 421 34. c. Two irregular ones in us 424. 50 Whence they arise 425 61 Where made 428. 78 A Flint capable of retaining the solar light 147 95 155 35 The Bloody Flux how cured 475 29 The quality of food doth not hurt except where medicines are wanting 702 What a Fog is 68 24 VVhat a Form is and whence 130 2â—3 c. The distinction 'twixt an Essential and substantial form 130 7 133 22 143 67 A four-fold form 143 67 Fox lungs censured 260 38 Of the original of Fountains 6â—â— Fountains dispense the seeds of Minerals and Metals 690 19 Fountains not thickned by the air 691 From whence the best fountains do arise 694 Of the Keeper of Fountains ibid VVhy they are called sharp ibid VVhat the sharpness of Fountains proceeds from 695 22 Of the fountains of the Spaw 696 1 VVhat they contain 697 5 VVhy a vein of Iron is invisible in fountains 698 8. VVhy fountains are different in strength 698 14 Of the virtues of the hungry salt of the Fountains and how far they act 699. VVhom they do not hâ—lp ibid How they profit in the stone 700 12 The qualities of fountains are Relolleous and Cherionial â—01 19 Advice to those that drink of Spaw waters 702 How the waters may pass to the midriff quickly ibid How much he ought to drink and what he is to take with it 703 10 A Frog how reducible to its first matter 141 56 G. GAs what it is 69 29 71 10 106 14 VVhat it retains 109 34 Galen ignorant of the causes of Ulcers 321 25 Galen no Anatomist 423 43 303 3â— Galen never knew Rose-water Aqua vitae nor Quick-silver 10â—â— Galens errors about Ulcers 319 14 1â— Galen ignorant of the Latax 378 33 VVhat the Gaâ—l's use is in the body 427 74 The Gaul a vital Bowel 211 34 1061 It performs its digestion by a fermental Blas 214 46 The Gaul hath the nature of a Balsam 216 53 It is taken so in Scripture ibid. 1041 24 From what the Gaul receives a ferment 1048 14 The Generation of Fauns Satyrs Nymphs c. 681 81 Generation of Troâ—ts 684 91 Generation of man described 736 737 738. Ginger produceth sweat 250 â— Glas turns into water under the earth c. 116 33 151 15 The Globe is Oval 35 â—2 The best manner of drawing forth Goats blood 210 75 Its wonderful virtue ibid God made not Death 337 572 157 58 649 How it came to be 649 â— 650 651 The Essential Image of God is in the mind 718 Gold distilled over the Helm 64 6 Its ponderosity is from its seminality compressing the water 67 18 Though reduced into the form of Butter Râ—zin or vitriol yet useless 478 42 VVhat it is rendred efficacious by ibid Gold and precious stones examined 970 Purging medicines hurtful in the Goâ—errhea Of the original of the Gout 291 9 842 292 The Gout sometimes driven away by fear 293 15 Gout not from a defluxing Catarrh nor helped by Cauteries 385 23 386 1 Gout distinguished not by heat or cold but by a seminal Essence â—87 8 The original of the Gout and its progress 388 13 The Seat of the Gout 389 Of the curt with an Epitomâ— of the Gout 390 25 Caâ—teries and drying drinks â—ain in the Gout 391 32 35 The action of Government unknown produceth many errours 333 36 Grapes immediately eaten hurtful 107 16 Grass roots cannot cool the Liver 319 1 Of Gunpowder 107 21 H. HAres fat puls out a â—horn 521. 1160 Being dryed cures the bloody flux 4â—3 To what end the motion of the heart is 179 24 Herbs and â—â—rbarists why disesteemed 1â— 10 The Schoolmen's way of judging of the elementary degrees of herbs erroneous 69. 28 459 1â— Their sloath and errour in the search of their virtues 15â— 3. c. Why their preparation requirs much wariness 458. 11 1â— c. Their properties distinguishable by their specifick savour 460. 17 472 12 Their time of gathering when 460. 17 468 19 142 60 The Heaven gives neither life nor form 129 1 132 14 108â— It doth not cause diseases 1084 1086 1087 1091 What is required for healing 17â— 44 Heat not the first 〈◊〉 of life 196. 26 Heat not the proper 〈◊〉 of digesâ—ion 199. â—â—2 Heat consumes not radic at moisture â—17 Heat is not the life 718 Heat fails not for want of moisture 744 Hâ—â—â—rhoids 943 Their cure 944 From whence the pain in the head may arise 339. 1â— What ought to be minded in applying remedies to the head 276. 20 Of the effect of Remedies applied to the head 292. 12 Hellebor commended for the heal 368. 63 Also for madnesse 302. 26 The defects that manifest themselves in the head cured by stomack Remedies 302. 26 Memory placed in the head 304. 3â— A History of a woman infected with the pox 34 40 Of Count Destaires being opened 509 Of Cardinal Ferdinand 951 Of a Hydropical man 406. 33 510 520 Of a boy troubled with the Iliack passion 422 38 Of a Gas stird up by Sal Armoniack and Aqua â—ortis 426 62. Of a bursten man 428. 75 Of a noble woman strangled by affects of the womb 428. 76 Of a Sonatours wife in child birth 443. Of a merchant's ascending the high mountain of the Canaries 73. â—â— Of an earth-quake at Faâ—â—agusts 79. 13 Of thunder 91. 20 Of an earth-quakâ— 93. 3 Of predictions deciphered in the Stars 122. 27 Of the Authors Chamber-fellows walking by night 141. 53 Of Butler 563 Of several wonderful things 597 Of the Author 958 Of a man with a Quart an Ague 91â— History of Crabs 886 Of a preacher in England 846 Of a Duke being diffected 627 Of a woman whose Liver weighed 21. pounds Ibid. Of a boy that aâ—e this own dung 211. 36â— Of a Printer of Bruâ—els that lived 23. days of his own dung 212 Of a Chymist that made viâ—â—gar yearly by the odour of the vessel 217 Several Histories of the distasted 〈◊〉 228 28 History of Paracelâ—us his Birth and life 230 28 History of Groynland fishing 232 History of a speaking Satyr 683. 685 88 Of the bignesse and
of things Lastly the Fluxes of ripenesles slownesses and swiftnesses And likewise they have not known the composures and resolvings of Bodies made as well by Nature as Art Likewise the necessities ends or bounds dispositions defects restorings deaths consequences of Seeds also of Ferments also their nearnesses and dependencies for that they diligently taught the natural Agent to be a forreiner and a stranger to things Also by way of consequence they have been ignorant of the births of forms as also of the properties proceeding from thence In whose place they have exposed fortune chance time a vacuum or emptiness that which is infinite although they are all strangers to Nature and those things which did contain ridiculous Disciplines Yea they have followed the Authour who believed the World to be extended from Eternity unto Eternity by its own proper forces or virtue and he contradicteth himself by denying an infinite Since the first moreover being to abide for ever to make all things in his eternal power doth necessarily include an infinite CHAP. V. The Chief or Master-Workman 1. The Archeus or chief Workman is the efficient cause 2. How it is in Seeds 3. The properties and differences of the same 4. The Composition of the natural Air. 5. The Birth of seminal Idea's or shapes 6. The seminal Garment of the chief Workman 7. The places of Hospitality with Curers appointed for the Seed 8. The Conjunction of the Stars imitated in Seeds 9. The first mover hath not the Vicarship in a man I Have touched at the birth and Causes of Natural things and least I may seem to have placed the efficient Cause undeservedly within I will the more fitly explain the Workman the Vulcan or Smith of generations Whatsoever therefore cometh into the World by Nature it must needs have the Beginning of its motions the stirrer up and inward directer of generation Therefore all things however hard and thick they are yet before that their soundness they inclose in themselves an Air which before generation representeth the inward future generation to the Seed in this respect fruitful and accompanies the thing generated even to the end of the Stage Which air although in some things it be more plentiful yet in Vegetables it is pressed together in the shew of a juyce as also in Mettals it is thickned with a most thick homogeniety or sameliness of kinde notwithstanding this gift hath happened to all things which is called the Archeus or chief Workman containing the fruitfulness of generations and Seeds as it were the internal efficient cause I say that Workman hath the likeness of the thing generated unto the beginning whereof he composeth the appointments of things to be done But the chief Workman consists of the conjoyning of the vitall air as of the matter with the seminal likeness which is the more inward spiritual kernel containing the fruitfulness of the Seed but the visible Seed is onely the husk of this This Image of the Master-Workman issuing out of the first shape or Idea of its predecessour or snatching the same to it self out of the cup or bosom of outward things is not a certain dead Image but made famous by a full knowledge and adorned with necessary powers of things to be done in its appointment and so it is the first or chief Instrument of life and feeling For example For a Woman with Child fashioneth a Cherry in her Young by her desire in that part in which she moveth her hand in desiring A Cherry I say in the flesh true green pale yellow and red according to the stations in which the Trees do promote their Cherries And the same Cherry sooner waxeth red in the same Young in Spain than in the Low-Countries Therefore a Cherry is made by Imagination So through the Imagination of lust a vitall Image of living Creatures is brought over into the Spirit of the Seed being about to unfold it self by the course of generation But since every corporeal act is limited into a Body hence it comes to passe that the Archeus the Workman and Governour of generation doth cloath himself presently with a bodily cloathing For in things soulified he walketh thorow all the Dens and retiring places of his Seed and begins to transform the matter according to the perfect act of his own Image For here he placeth the heart but there he appoints the brain and he every where limiteth an unmoveable chief dweller out of his whole Monarchy according to the bounds of requirance of the parts and of appointments At length that President remains the overseer and inward ruler of his bounds even until death But the other floating about being assigned to no member keeps the oversight over the particular Pilots of the members being clear and never at rest or keeping holyday Moreover as sublunary things do express in themselves an Analogy or proportion of things above So every thing by how much the more lively it is by so much the more perfectly it imitates the Stars so that sick persons do seem to carry in themselves sensible Ephemeries or daily Registers being skilful of future seasons Indeed in the bowels the planetary Spirits do most shine forth even as also in the whole influous Archeus the courses and forces of the Firmament do appear But the first mover hath no where had a member in men but onely under the Archeus of the wombe it meets by meditating by way of similitude as it were in the last finishing of created things For happily a Woman is therefore more stirred or troubled in her first Conceptions as she drawes with her other Orbs by her first motions As often as the wombe being swollen with the ascending Rule of Imagination doth suffer an animosity or angry heat it snatcheth the particular Archeusses of the bowels into the obedience of it self by striving to excel manly weaknesses and for the most part wretchedly deludes Physitians with a feigned Image The Archeusses of bruit Beasts are almost like unto mans Neither shall we draw an unprofitable knowledge of the shop of simples from the difference of Plants and their Sexes Because neither is it without a Mystery that in creeping things and insects being born in corruption alone Nature invariously sporting her self intends nothing so seriously as the proportionable differences of Sexes on both sides Wherefore neither must we think the same things to have been neglected in Plants although they may make one onely Seed blessed with a promiscuous Sex and a most fruitful of-spring But the most able effectress of the greater forces is discerned under the Signatures or Impressions of Venus she being very bright there is a care of the Sexes and now and then a hermaphroditical confused mixture For whatsoever Plants are femalls they do allure or procure the violent motion of the first mover Therefore the Natural Astrologie of the humane Seed frames its directions according to the general motion of the Heaven but it doth not beg it abroad for if
surviving Wherefore the more weak stomach feels a greater load or grief about the end of digestion than presently after food as if the Archeus were mindefull of his antient lost dignity Therefore I call these surviving qualities of the middle life ambulatory or walking ones And so that which the Schooles do cry out of as impossible is a common and necessary journey in nature as though it should be necessary for the matter of generation to be wholly stripped of every accident of its former essence nor that it could overcome fore-going dispositions and as if corruption or privation should precede every generation And so that it should be of necessity for a first matter or summary hyle to be actually underlaid and immediately to go before generation which notwithstanding they will have to happen in an instant For unless previous dispositions and the ferments of those to be generated should fore-exist in being made any thing might indifferently be generated of any thing when as the authority of principles being badly understood hath forced the Schooles against this Rock they thinking that all accidents do immediately and originally depend on the totall Form of a thing As though the form coming to it in the point of generation should have all the characters of its seed in it self and had infused them before it were But if the dispositive properties are sent into the Archeus by the form of the generater at leastwise they differ in the whole individual of the thing supposed neither shall they have respect unto the form of the thing generated The Schooles have neglected the perfect act of the seeds and the Archeus as also the actualities of subordinate forms And they have not known that from the beginning of generation even unto the voluntary end of the thing generated there is not but the flux of one seed not at all reaching to the forms of things generated Therefore the powers of seeds arising unto vitality or liveliness and the lives or forms of the living thing underlaid are concealed in the middle life of the Archeus Therefore the properties of the middle life do passe with the transchanging Archeus of meats and are transplanted into the jurisdiction of the humane Archeus yet much more dull than themselves Therefore it is frivolous that there is no accident in the â—â—ing begotten which was first in the seed which they do badly call corrupt Likewise also that from the form of a thing is all the off-spring of accidents For so from the univocall simple and homogeneall immortall minde should so many properties and inclinations of men badly be fetched But if thou shalt adjoyn the Stars to the minde these will soon forsake thee And the far-fetcht aid doth faint in the journey and faileth before its striking upon it It should also go ill with the seeds if from the form of a vitall thing which onely comes to it afterwards every property and efficacy of seeds were to be borrowed Therefore the opinion of the Schooles brings a disagreement that generation doth presuppose corruption and this likewise it Otherwise if the middle power consisteth in the totall form and last life of the thing Surely Physitians deceive or blinde the eyes of the sick when as the vitall form being withdrawn out of Plants and living Creatures they make use of these for the refreshment of the diseased They see indeed that oft-times in the Urine of a sucking Childe the Odours of the things which the Nurse hath taken do subsist to wit Oil of Anniseed Mace c. That which the Nurse hath took casts a smell in the Urine of the sucking Childe and so they are drunk down by the Nurse to that end yet they forbid the same accidents to remain safe in the thing born or begotten which was before in the thing corrupted Notwithstanding that rather in every naturall point of motion and alteration or between one and another instant all accidents are renewed Indeed the Schooles had rather that the light from the Firmament even to the Earth should in every instant of places and motions actually produce infinite kindes of light propagating each other by a continuall thred in every Mathematicall point of a Mean than to grant that light is immediately brought through a place by the shaking of its beam They had rather I say that the smell of Asparagus should spring from the specificall form of the Urine than from the middle life For they have not known any Being but a Substance and an accident nor a light subsisting but immediately within the substance of a mean Neither do they observe that they acknowledge an equivocall or double generation of accidents while they acknowledge one to be sprung from an accident but another from the specificall form But there are Reasons why the objects of sight do more strongly move the Imagination of Women with young then the objects of the other Senses that are more corporeal The first is because a visible object is in place immediately and so doth more affect and reacheth nearer and pierceth the Soul by reason of the alike manner of existing To wit they reach to one another by an intimate touching 2. The other Senses do readily serve the sight To wit a Woman with childe seeing a Salmon is carried into a desire of eating For then whatsoever she shall take affords her indeed actually the taste of Salmon and the taste serves the sight as its Master but it falling down into the stomach nor she having Salmon really in a visible object she perceiveth her deceit which her appetite causeth unto her and therefore she hath a loathing and the Woman is weakened trembling or panting at the heart For the appetite feigneth the taste of Salmon but the womb is angry at the deceit but it cannot transform the meat into Salmon Yea although she shall eat of another Fish and there is an easie passage in things that have a co-resemblance yet she cannot thereby form the longed for Salmon because it is the object of taste but not of sight Whereas otherwise suddenly by the object Salmon or Duck she easily transchangeth her Young into such a Monster For the objects of taste sitting immediately in some body cannot by reason of their corporeal thickness form a tranchangeative Image Therefore they who study in Adepticall things do strive to promote their labour of wisdom by the objects of sight and indeed by the light of the Moon That indeed the Soul may be touched by a formall light and night unto night may shew knowledge As touching the Young surely I consider it as a forreign branch implanted in the stock of a Tree which although it be nourished by its Mothers Liquor yet it liveth presently within in its own proper quarter For neither is it within as an entire part but as it were an entertained Souldier it snatcheth all things into its pleasure or desire and enlargeth the Vessel it self for its own command or government But I consider the
of name of the Philosopher despised the contradicters of his own and indeed false beginnings no otherwise than as Necromancers do require to be credited without demonstration Let eternal prayse and glory be to my Lord in all Benediction who hath formed us not after the Image of the most impure VVorld but after the figure of his own divine Image therefore hath he adopted us for the Sons of Election and co-heirs of his glory through grace Surely the condition of that similitude were to be grieved at and too much to be pitied which had hitherto subjected us under the Law of all calamities from our Creation even till now and that before sin we should onely be the engravement of so abjected a thing as if the VVorld had been framed for it self but not for us as the ultimate end but we for the VVorld whose Images indeed onely we should be to wit we ought to be made stony that we may represent Stones and Rocks And so we should all of right be altogether stony leprous c. For indeed seeing we are by Creation that which we are and a Stone should be made in us that we may represent Rocks Now death and a Disease were in us before that we departed out of the right way or fell Let Heresies depart For neither do we all suffer the falling evill neither do they who labour with it have it that sometimes we may represent Thunder or the Earth-quake or an unknown Lorinde of the Air its unconstancy But now if there were at least the least truth hereof verily he who suffers dammages according to Justice ought also to perceive the profits of the Microcosme even so that especially we ought to fly Seeing it is more rational for us sooner to shew our selves Birds than great Stones or storms of the Air or water Therefore let allegorical and moral senses depart out of nature Nature throughly handles Beings as they do in very deed and act subsist in a substantial entity and do flow forth from the root of a seed even unto the conclusion of the Tragedy neither doth it admit of any other interpretation than by being made and being in essence from ordained causes I observe also that Paracelsus Tartar being invented and introduced into Diseases hath not yet stood secure enough for truly he immingles Tartar also in the first Beginnings of our constitution and so neither doth he require the Seeds of things themselves out of Tartar but he will have Tartar to be radically intimately and most thorowly immirgled with the Seeds whereby he may finde out the Seminary of Hereditary Diseases Of which mixture he being at length forgetful calleth it ridiculous He saith that a VVoman having conceived by the Seed of man it doth separate snatch lay up Tartar into it self and that the Seed being as it were anatomized doth constitute it self the flattering Heir of that Tartar On the contrary that the Spirit of Wine is never so refined by possible circulations as that it doth not as yet contain its own Tartar in it As if Tartar were the chief Root of the Universe or an immediate Companion thereunto But I know if any forreign thing be materially in the Seed generation doth never follow Next that the Seed of Adam being materially prepared in Paradise had not generated a more perfect off-spring than that which afterwards after the fall was made in him Cain and Abel do especially prove that thing At length if Tartar should so intimately grow in Seeds that after many years from generation it should cause hereditary Diseases by materially separating it self from the whole surely that Tartar should not so soon be separable by the Magnet or attraction of a VVoman seeing if any thing be separated from the seed it is a Gas diametrically opposite unto Tartar For if the womb should separate any thing from the seed that should happen by drawing but such is the condition of drawing things that they draw for themselves and unto themselves and then cease but if the womb shall extract for separation sake there shall now be no fear of an hereditary evill because the womb hath a power of serving that which is hurtfull Lastly although Diseases shall come by degrees into the place of exercise yet they were never materially thorowly mixed with the Seed after the manner of Tartar that not Tartar not a gowty Chalk fore-existed in the Seed but that Diseases derived from the Parents do lay hid in manner of a Character in the middle life of the Archeus whose Seal doth at length under its own maturity of dayes break forth and frameth a Body fit for it self and so is made the Archeus of a Disease together with every requisite property of the Seeds For a Disease also is a natural constitution proceeding from the Seed consisting of an Archeus as the efficient cause It hath otherwise rustically been thought in the Schools that Diseasie Bodies do materially conflux unto the Generation of hereditary defects It also contains an Idiotism to exclude a Disease out of the number of natural Agents and corporal Beings seeing the matter also which they say is diseasifying is now and then obvious to the finger if it be thorowly viewed by the eyes If therefore a Disease be now reckoned among the Beings of Nature why should it not be established by a necessity of its own seed It is rude Phylosophy that Tartar had been from the beginning in the seed and that after thirty whole years it should begin the first principles of a Cream and should meditate of an Increase and as it were a particular Republique for it self and that wholly without the direction of the seed God made not death nor therefore hath he connexed Tartar unto seeds as the matter of Diseases For if so stupid errours should happen unto the seminal Archeus the Ruler of Nature hath already forsaken the Rains of the same and mankinde shall shortly go to ruine Also that saying of Paracelsus is absurd that not so much as the Spirit of Wine doth want its own Tartar For although it should be circulated for the space of an Age yet it shall never in very deed separate any Tartar For Paracelsus who never saw or found that Tartar of the Spirit of VVine will therefore be credited in his own good belief no otherwise than as elsewhere where he thinketh that water as oft as it hath ceased to be seen doth wholly depart into nothing and that something is created anew For it doth not follow a Salt is made out of the Spirit of vvine it receives a coagulation in the Salt of Tartar therefore the Spirit of vvine doth contain Tartar Because although every coagulated thing should be Tartar which it is not yet those Bodies do not contain those things which at length are made of them To wit Milk is made of Grasse of Milk Arterial Bloud and from hence the seed of man yet Grasse doth not contain a man in it self as neither
the Bloudy-flux The spittle of a Dog cures wounds by licking them but if he be corrupted with madness he propagates the deadly poyson of his own madness on other Species yea on general kindes we have Houshold examples Eunuchs are beardless of a straighter neck their knees being writhed inwards c. Therefore the Beard at least doth efficiently depend on the stones being come to maturity yea the whole habit of the Body and inclinations of the Soul in gelded persons do differ from entire individuals which thing is evident and daily seen in an Oxe a Bull a Capon and a Cock But yet the stones have not their Pipes Fibers Guards or Vapours on the skin of the Chin on the feathers of a Cock or on the horns of a Bull as neither on the animosity or sturdiness of the minde or on the haires But there is an unsensible influx of the stones as it were another of the Moon beginning even from an Infant before the ripeness of age also at the time of ripe years changing the voyce Therefore the action of government of the stones is no otherwise than as the Moon begetteth the Marrows with child So the Brain is the chief over growth which the straining of the turning joynts in crook-backed folks or putting bones out of joynt do sufficiently shew Which thing also in the womb doth not sluggishly offer it self by reason of the womb alone a Woman is that which she is she wants a beard and although she be of a moyster habit of Body yet she growes sooner to a perfect state She suffers other disturbances and animosities and makes another flesh and bloud diverse from a man And so that also for the wombs sake the Sex assumes a devotion to it self by a certain Prerogative The ruler of these actions sits in the womb who being sore smitten or disturbed in his own Circle is for the producing of all Diseases universally And therefore the Jaundise Apoplexie Strangling Asthma c. are not from things retained But they draw their original from a more sublime Monarchy For oft-times the womb straineth one onely tendon in the foot or throat or it plainly presseth together the whole Weasand as if the disease were local when as in the mean time no exhalation is sent directed or received unto that sinew or place For by an Aspect onely it contracts the Lungs that it may wholly deprive them of breathing They are trifles which are brought hither concerning a hurtful vapour Because it is that which should more neighbouringly pull the Intestines Stomach and Midriff together than that it should come unto the Lungs onely Elsewhere also the Throat ariseth unto the heighth of the Chin and setleth again neither is that the reward of vapours But the dominion government aspect and influx and command of the womb causeth it so to be For it affecteth that part which it will and sometimes destroyes the whole Body because it is subjected For as long as it is not shaken by the disturbances of the Soul it stands with a straight foot yea the womb sleepeth or slumbereth but being once enforced by disturbances for the future it brings forth its own inundations throughout the whole Body and now and then those durable till death Because if the womb by its own Monarchy wholly distinguisheth a Woman from a man and it be the promiscuous parent of that distinction it is no wonder also that it doth by the same government disquiet all even the most remote parts no otherwise than as the nearest when or where it will And it is certain to him that makes a full search that the operations of the sensitive Soul are of a co-like order and of co-like progresses in operating that if the womb by a spiritual governmen snites the health this is indulged to the Soul by a like priviledge of acting on the womb For if a Woman great with Child being stirred with a desire as elsewhere I have repeated doth behold a Cherry and shall touch her self on the fore-head he Young presently receives the Cherry Not indeed the naked spot of a Cherry but a Cherry which waxeth green white yellow and looks of a ruddy colour every year together with the fruits of the Trees yea which is far more wonderful For that which happens to the Young in Brabant that happens far sooner to the same in Spain to wit where Cherries do sooner come forth Therefore the thought or cogitation reacheth the Young in a direct passage not indeed by the directions of fibers or straight beams and the conveyance of aptness of readiness as neither by the conceit of the Brain and Womb but onely by a reciprocal or recoursary action of government But besides if there be no Young present the Idea's of Imagination do not therefore cease to be deciphered in the sides of the womb The which seeing they are strangers to the womb it becomes easily furious as being impatient of forreign Tables There is therefore a passable way from the sensitive Soul into the womb and from this to it which thing Hippocrates first took notice of To wit that the whole Body was exspirable and conspirable From whence it comes to passe that some Symptomes of the womb are scarce discerned from enchantments For it so straightly strains the Coat of the Lungs that it sends no Air at all thorow it into the breast Here is no communication passage access scope or manner of a vapour and much lesse is there an affinity with Rheums in this respect seeing it begins and is bounded or finished without a material aflux or eflux It is therefore onely the action of government whereby the mad womb doth disturb all things But a co-knitting nighness aptness or consent are not to be regarded but a superiority of Monarchal power and a vital dependance of parts For the ruling parts do act by an absolute power not being bound to the nearness or nice scituations of places in every scituation of the Body alike cruelly And that which is far more famous the ruling power or virtue reacheth undefiled unto its bound or mark without a defilement of meanes The womb doth oft-times live and tumulteth after the death of a Woman which it hath brought on her And so it enjoyes a singular Monarchy which that duplicity declareth neither doth it obey the Body unto which then it prescribeth Lawes For neither otherwise is it violently shaken but by the disturbances of the Soul wherefore besides the singular perceivances of smelling tasting and touching it is powerful also in a certain bruital understanding whence it is mad and rageth if all things shall not answer its own will or desires It rageth I say by writhing it self upwards downwards before behinde or on the sides with an undeclarable torment of pain But as long as that fury is restrained in its own Inn it indeed stirs up local griefs For the parts which it forcibly snatcheth or beholdeth at a distance it doth as it were strain and
strangle with a Cramp no otherwise than as being stirred with fury on them I remember that I once saw those that were strangled by their womb whose dead Carcasses looked black and blew being black in those parts wherein they had been pained before death Neither also doth it largely poure forth its Issues unless it should open its own Veins by an inordinate madness to overthrow the guiltless treasure of life So neither doth it contract the sinewes and muscles make the joynts lame displace the tendons resolve the muscles and crisp and cowrinckle the coats or membranes but onely by the action of government and unless it being stirred with fury it should keep a duality with the Womans life otherwise as long as every thing keeps unity it desires to remain in its Essence or Being When therefore a fury acts out of the womb alone it is the lesse evil But when it flies thorow into the sensitive Soul with which I have shewen that it hath an agreeing co-resemblance it pours forth the true madness of its own fury out of the hypochondrial part In young Maids at their first being enflamed or swollen with a lesse pleasure it withholds suppresseth discoloureth their courses and brings forth inordinate ones Then at length it produceth Palsies Cramps beatings of the heart tremblings and swoonings and contracteth the sinews which distempers by the volatile tincture of Coral Oyl of Amber Salt of Steel and such like Medicines I daily cure The same distempers being of the milder sort do obey stupefactive things Also the more cruel ones require greater Secrets of Chymistry What things I have already spoken touching the government of the Stones and Womb I have demonstrated by many Arguments in the Treatise of Catarrhs and likewise of the Duumvirate not by a more dull priviledge to belong unto the Stomach neither that fumes as neither that vapours do ascend out of the Stomach unto the Head and so that in this respect an impossible Fable is taught in the Schools Likewise in the Treatise of Fevers and elsewhere I have shewen by what sume drunkenness is made and by what way fumes are derived into the more formerly bosoms of the Brain Now I will teach the manner of making in an Apoplexie the Falling-sickness drowsie Evil c. that when I shall have denied them to be made by a co-knit Chain of vapours they may at least be understood to undergoe the action of Government To which end I must repeat what I before spake by the way To wit that the Beard is bred by the stones and that the distinctions ages varieties and colours hereof do depend thereupon which thing seeing it is commonly known I at leastwise admonish that it ought to be understood that a Vapour is not made which is brought forward by the Ministery of particular Organs but that a power is to be considered which in manner of light doth affect and dispose the whole Body or at leastwise its own objects according to the gift and ends seminally implanted in them by the Creator therefore a certain power or virtue beames forth from the Stones throughout the Body into the Archeus and so also into the sensitive Soul seeing the Church commends the femall Sex for a natural devotion Why therefore doth the Beard grow on the Chin and not on the Fore-head or on some other place seeing that eflux of the light of the Stones throughout the whole Body is universal This matter carries in it a most hidden Root of Philosophy demonstrated in the Treatise of the entrance of death into man For we must know that Souls do act on their own Body by the power of their own certain vital light the which seeing it is by the life in which the Soul it self is every where present every way extended the Soul in that its light deciphers the Idea's of its own conceipt and command that afterwards it may by the administring Spirits be wholly committed into the Organs for execution But those soulified lights or lightsome Souls themselves cannot be comprehended by us by a direct conceipt Seeing they are as it were the immediate clients of another and that an intelligible World wherefore the most High calls himself the Father of Lights For the Senses do bring nothing unto us from without which may decipher a conception of the soul in the phantasie wherefore in the Treatise of forms I have according to my slenderness touched at this matter as largely as I could in the newness of so great a Paradox which is as yet more strongly to be considered elswhere therefore lest repetition should tire it is sufficient here to have said by the way that substantial Souls and Forms even as likewise also a formal substance which I elsewhere distinguish from the former are certain unnamed Lights immediately framed by the Father of Lights Therefore the powers depending on Souls and certain ministring guarding Lights are also thus far lightsome I have shewen therefore by Science Mathematical that those very Lights do pierce each other yet that they reserve the Essence and properties of their former Lights But in inferiour things wherein Forms do inhabite and also formal Powers that these have their light even actually capable of being stirred up by our Archeus no otherwise than as in an Egg the power of the seed is actuated by a nourishing warmth Therefore there is in the roots of the hairs in the chin a power of growth duration and other dispositions although the masculine ruling power thereof be of one stone which power of the stones indeed although it be absolute yet it is not but diversly received in places to wit according to the manner and capacity of every receiver But as much as this speculation conduceth unto Medicine I will translate poysonous powers into the place of vital ones Because they are not lesse lightsome than those which are otherwise wholsom if poysons do immediately issue from their own forms For they are the gifts either of the more outward or forreign Simples of the first Creation or in the next place are begotten afterwards in us through errour of living By the same priviledge also the natural powers of the parts to wit of the Womb Stomach Stones c. do beam forth their own lights throughout the whole Body and do pierce the light of the Archeus also by the action of government depending on their light whence indeed this Archeus is comforted weakened estranged prostrated yea perisheth Therefore poysons in the Midriffs or those bred elsewhere do act by virtue of their own formal and lightsom powers according to the natural endowed Idea imprinted on them and they do affect the vital light planted in the sensitive Soul in the Archeus and so in the parts and they mutually pierce each other by a radical union and that either by a contagion of poyson remaining and transplanting the in-bred formal and vital light of the parts or onely for a little space as in those that have the
the assisting and co-operating Work-man of all Diseases an angry Parent and revenger For he saith that the unknown Star Zedo is the immediate and containing cause of the Dropsie So he affirmeth that to the Consumption Gout Apoplexie c. doth belong their own peculiar yet unnamed Star and unto every Epilepsie or falling Evil it s own proper constellation But in his Paramires he affirms the three first things to be the immediate causes of all Diseases that is all things confused Let him explain and excuse him that will for I have not dedicated my life to the interpreting of others dreams Therefore have I seriously searched into Nature and the particular kindes of Diseases and it hath happened unto me no otherwise than as to all others before me until that the Doctrines of all Authors being cast off I had seriously implored the Divine Grace For then I suddenly knew that unto every Disease hath happened its own matter which may nourish a Vulcan proper to it self within the which although he doth sometimes imitate the courses of the Stars yet that the enforcing cause thereof did not depend on the Stars For all Seeds do possess as it were their own Common-wealth especially their own vital light whereby of their own proper vertue they do shew forth a proportionable resemblance of the Stars Be it a ridiculous thing that the Consumption or Dropsie although they may be stirred up more severely and mildly under diverse starry positions are caused or made by the motion and light of the Stars the which do after another manner generate by a manifest occasion through so clear a collection of filths and the which being removed Health doth also follow without leave of the Stars The exposition of which Doctrine by me thou shalt read in the Book of the Plague and elsewhere But the matters of Diseases with their seminary Vulcans from the first even unto the last I have prosecuted with all their duplicity and interchangeable courses in respect of humane life The Almighty grant that so much as he hath bestowed on me I may nakedly refer unto his Honour and the profit of my Neighbour and that he may bestow another more able than my self on the world For Paracelsus hath framed divers Books concerning long life to have chosen death for himself that he would by a Divine priviledge have comforted his own old Age by his Elixiâ— of propriety but not by Remedies prescribed by him for long life who died in the 47th year of his Age. So great boasting therefore and unconstancy of this Man have hitherto made me a little careful In the mean time many difficulties have long since held me in doubt about the three first things until that I having obtained help from God knew that Woods and Herbs were to be distilled without any Dead head For I did long ago wonder that out of the coal of Honey no ashes and by consequence neither the salt of ashes could be had Which things afterwards I willingly through an universal resolving of a Body beheld For it was sufficient for Paracelsus to have forsaken all things involved under doubting who in a slender draught had drunk down anothers Invention and had not yet converted it into nourishment and making it his own of robbery hath he striving to flie unto a Monarchy slipped out of his Nest before he had sufficient feathers For he snatching unto himself the glory of the Invention hath well pleased himself in dispersingly repeating one and the same thing often although in the mean time he made little progress in things of his own For it is a ridiculous thing and like a Fable that Sulphur should be distilled sublimed reverberated calcined resolved in us and that from hence divers Diseases should be caused only indeed by the boldness of the Man without a Pledge or Surety of greater authority than himself For he knew not nor durst to draw Diseases into an open profession or publishment he being not yet sully committed hereunto by his Inventer It is also a childish dream that salt is distilled sublimed calcined circulated and doth undergo other torments in us or that Mercury doth sustain these strict examinations in us and for every interchangeable course of variations that it doth of it self alone bring forth other Diseases pains and defects and that others again be infolded with its other two fellow beginnings or masked with divers degrees and doses They are also trifles that Mercury by reason of the highest circulation of its subtilty might be the cause of all sudden death which we have known to be constituted by its causes to cure and prevent For first of all eight ounces of venal blood are daily blown away in nourishing without a Dead head pain and defect yea without feeling while they pass thorow and whereby they pass thorow But whatsoever hath once been dedicated unto expulsion in the shew of Water Mercury or Sweat or whatsoever hath been once reckoned unfit for nourishing or the offices of nourishment being now once performed is designed for scattering or blowing away that is never afterwards distilled sublimed calcined or circulated in us For the works of Nature are too serious because they do ultimately respect God For Nature doth not play at Ball that it should again receive excrements into favour being once rent from the commerce of Life It never returns into the same point because it proceeds and never keeps Holy-day In the next place if any watry liquor be a hundred times re-distilled it shall not therefore be the sharper or subtiler but rather by degrees the Seed of its middle life being worn out it passeth more and more unto the simplicity of an Element For rain water which now falleth down from above is not more subtile or fine than that which rained in the beginning of its Creation But if any watry thing should exhale by our luke-warmth and should obtain a sharpness through dreamed returns that should not be the fault of subtilizing of Mercury but of an adjunct Surely I wonder that so great a Chymist hath not known that the venal blood is not circulated nor that it doth bear the circles of subtilizings in us and that it doth not persevere in us above one only course of the Moon and the which tribute of feeble blood a Woman doth therefore pay Because she is she which ought to abound with very much blood as well for an increase of the Young as for the sucking of Milk But that Paracelsus might the better overshadow his own Fiction he supposeth that one of the three first things being separated doth presently assume from a Microcosmical Nature an actuality in that which is casual to any and one Being of those which are infinite a thousand Seeds whereof being collected into one it did contain and therefore that by reason of a monstrous and strange Nativity a hostile thing is for that very cause in us and is made the cause of Diseases And so that there are
right side as also the Western in the left and he at length ascribes to every wind their proper Remedies involved under Hieroglyphicks as yet to him unknown Alas with how sorrowful a pledge are all these things and by how sporting a means hath that man invaded the principality of healing to wit that we are all little Worlds for at how dear a rate doth he sell us this Idea or Image of the Macrocosme and by what a scanty argument doth he found his dreams when as in very deed there are no winds nor matter of winds in us which we do not breath in and breath out otherwise that neither is there a flatulent or windy Gas in us unless in one way house and passage To wit from the stomack through the bowels even into the fundament Indeed Paracelsus had known these things in part in the next place that of winds in the Womb Pleura Head and Muscles there were old Wives fables Nevertheless he as yet weaved greater that he might compose these ridiculous hinges of winds the which by a stronger right he had transferred into the Wombe then into the bowels The which with great grief doth writh it self sometimes on the left side of the bottom of the belly sometimes on the right side and besiegeth even the Navil or inclines it self behind unto the back and loynes But he had remained doubtful where he had found a fifth wind in the head-long Wombe and where a sixth while the Womb is carried straight upwards and therefore although he at large declameth concerning the Star or Astrum of the Wombe in a particular Book yet he sleeping hath neglected the Cardinal winds of the World in the exorbitances of the Wombe Although he also doth seriously declare that the Womb is a World but moreover less than the Microcosme But oh Paracelsus by supposing some Els of a bowel stretched out by wind and that wind shut up on both sides for if it be not shut up it shall neither cause pain nor stretch out but shall be evacuated by its own emunctory of its own accord and so that it doth neither breath nor is carried side-wayes after the manner of winds My question is concerning the Name Essence Original and Remedy of that wind And then when the Ileon is extended perhaps for 40 turns as well from the back forwards as with a side passage on both sides with what and what order of twisting shall the hinges of the four winds have their Scituation Name and property of Name For so in every winding circle there should be now fourty Southern winds and as many Northern ones c. For if in the twentieth or in every particular twisting of the intestine thou oughtest to have added a reason why not in the tenth or twelfth if thou desiredst credit to be given to thee dreaming of these things But surely thou hast not been a faithful Aeolus of those winds Because thou marking the colick to have oft-times afforded the contracted muscles of the hands Convulsions I say and Palseys hast not blushed to say that winds are carried from the bowels through all the muscles and tendons And thou hast affirmed that with so much the more liberty because thou findest the Schools prone unto every service of vapours and winds perhaps for all Diseases For when through the dictating testimony of truth within they found not rest for themselves in Elements Complexions and Humours they being confused sought out a mean whereby they might find the cause of Diseases by vapours and winds For perhaps when humours had deceived them they wished that they might not be reproved by an invisible position of winds Indeed it was an invention of the Impostor Satan who seeing he endeavours to be Gods Ape by the belief of invisible things pretends that the understanding of the credulous or those rash of belief is due unto himself And that they do suffice for all Diseases so the belly do rustle its rumblings in the ears And therefore I ought also by all means to have treated of flatus's or windinesses Surely I pity on both sides so great unconstancy of Paracelsus and ignorance of those that believe him whereby he excludes and cuts off from himself his pretended title of the Monarch of Secrets For he knew not in this place that such is the property of any poyson being administred even under the friendly shew of purging Medicines that they do sorely trouble or shake the Archeus and stir up a Blas thereof according to the Aphorism A Cramp or Convulsion after Hellebour is mortal And that that colick which besides the wonted wringings of the bowels proceeding from a sharpness doth moreover contain an infection of poyson is also the Author of the Convulsion Although wind in the mean time be not carried out of the gut Ileon So a man dying with a total extinguishment of his strength leaves his dead carcase on both sides extended with a general Tetanus but whenas he is snatched away by a violent Death his dead carcase is flaggy Whence I have learned that there is a certain life feeling and motion or Blas in the flesh besides a voluntary one To wit that life apprehending poysons and death together with an extinguishment doth extend the tendons on both sides Whence it is false that the heart is the last which dieth For the life of the Muscles doth as yet remain surviving which is most powerful in Insects so also the head being plucked off flies do as yet flie away And in a woman long dead her Wombe hath oft-times chased out her young Therefore every Convulsion of the Muscles whether from the colick or by taking a laxative poyson or any other thing is not from a voluntary motion but from a natural act of feeling and moving of the Muscles but not that the flatus which extends the bowels doth also efficiently extend the Muscles Even as in the Book of the Disease of the Stone in the Treatise of Sense and Sensation I have abundantly confirmed It is therefore for a sound decree This is carminative that drives away winds but that scatters windy blasts As if by enchanting verses winds to be renounced by Physitians should depart For if the conduit and passage of utterance do lay open wind never wants a forreign aid as neither a strange driver that it may go forth Yea which is more wringings of the guts do not alwayes cease although there be a free egress for flatus's Otherwise if the way be without an impediment the windy blast whether the Physitian will or no shall find it for truly there is but one only passage of the bowels and that continual unto them But such driving Medicines ought to have some mean even as a Pestil thrusts forward the contained clysters But that mean that it may be fit for the expelling of a flatus it ought suitably to answer the conduit of the bowels as well in the slender as in the grosser ones and moreover to have a
the Legs is recocted into good Blood about the Ancles without the Shop of Sanguification and dominion of the Liver That is that the once out-hunted and cocted Blood is by a forreign agent and unfit organ at length received into favour that it doth by an inspired motion retire into the mouths of the Veines and is received or associated as equally fit for vital Offices But whence do they spend so much labour in drying up of the Dropsical affect that they can scarce command a possible abstinence of one year from liquid things if the Dropsie be the vice of the one Digestion of the Liver Why do they referre it among Diseases offending onely in moisture the which was to be attributed unto a full half Digestion For I will first dispute about the Liver and under the same by-work I will discover the occasional cause of the Dropsie I saw a certain un-savory Simple nor by any meanes to be manifested administred by a Physitian in the Suspition of the Stone of the Kidneys which suspended the Urine for eights dayes and even unto death the which presently before death was loosed and then it throughly be-pissed the bed cloathes The Disease brought forth another thing like it For truly neither in the Urine-pipe or Bladder appeared any obstacle after dissection But he had his left Kidney triangular free or undamnified from all obstruction and Stone But the right Kidney was plainely monstruous and scarce of the bigness of a Filburd-nut Therefore he had pissed 76 years with his left Kidney not letted or stopped That the Liver therefore is guiltless in the Dropsie I will declare my experiences For because the precepts of the Schooles did the less satisfie me in the Dropsie therefore I was wont being as yet a young Man to hasten although not called unto the Dissections of Dropsical Bodies that I might search out the birth-places of the Dropsie For I thought with my self to what end hath there been Anatomie now for two thousand years if there be not at this day a more successful curing of the Dropsie than in times past For wherefore are we the Butchers of dead Carcases if we do not learn by the errors of the Antients If we do not amend fore-past things For we flee unto Anatomie with a prejudice and sweep the purses of Heires if we do not look into the causes of Death that we may learn the cures For truly dissection profits the Dead nothing Heires also do not expend their moneys that they may heal the dead by Anatomy and much less that they may wound the same least happily he should rise againe nor also that they may learn to cure others which are unwilling to be healed But only the dead Carcase is opened for the Physitian and that he may more perfectly learn the Heire paies the reward of his learning Thus Oxen yee that yoaked are The Plow not for your selves do beare But Physitians seeing they scarce any longer expect to learn they stand by stop their Noses and hope by the expences of the Heires for the most part to escape the mark of Death A Lawyer after divers Gripings or Wringings of his Bowels died of a Dropsie But in the Dissection we saw his Liver without blemish An English-man my Neighbour by eating his fill of roasted Porke sliding into a daylie Flux and presently after into a Dropsie he died and being dissected his Liver was seen to be unhurt Hitherto also doth the Tragedie of Count Stegrius tend In the Autumne of the year 1605. I returning out of England to Antwerp found some hundreds after a malignant and popular Fever to be dropsical I cured many and many under the unhappy experiments of others in the mean time Perished But that People have a perswasion in them that unless all the Water be drawn out of the dead Carcases the Dropsie will passe over into the next Heire And so they are Solicitous of Dissection And I certainly affirme that I found the Liver of none defiled A certain Citizen was long pained between his bastard Ribs neither breathed he without Pain at length the Conjectures of Physitians being tried he died of a Dropsie But his Liver was seen to be without hurt One pertayning to the Kings Treasurie of Brabant after a sudden pissing of Blood was long handled by Physitians in vain and thefore being sent by his Physitians unto the Fountains of the Spaw he returning began to shew a hardness in the left Side of his Abdomen under his Ribs and thereupon the Leg of that side was swollen But the chief Physitians and those of Lovain although they saw his Urine like unto that of healthy Persons and thereby did betoken his Liver to be guiltless yet they desisted not from the continual use of solutive opening and Urine-provoking things yea they gave him steel diversly masked against the obstructions of the Liver to drink And at length having a huge Abdomen he Perished with a Dropsie For neither was there place for excuse as to say they were called late who were present with him from the hour of his bloudie Pissing But his dead Carcase being dissected his Liver was found innocent But his left Kidney had swollen and that more than was meet with a clot of out-hunted Blood such as is in a boyled Gut A Major of Souldiers from a bloudie Flux which was at length appeased died of a Dropsie whose Liver notwithstanding was without blemish however the Schooles may grin A certain Merchant keeping his bed through a Colick of four months fell into a Dropsie but being dissected he had his Liver without fault A Woman of sixty years old hearing in the night Theeves at the windows and rising dashed her Belly beyond the Breast-bone against a corner of the Table But first it pained her and then her Menstru'es brake forth as she thought the which although it was little yet it desisted not but with the birth of a Dropsie it also expurged into the masse of a greater Tympanie But she being dissected Her Liver offered it self undefiled Another old Woman being vexed with a more cruel Husband after inordinate menstru'es Perished with a Dropsie and shewed an unblamed Liver A certain Hand-maid hanging some washed webs of Cloath to high for her Stature sliding into a flux of the Womb at length died of a Dropsie neither offered her Liver it self guiltie to the beholders A Cuaplaine of Bruxells of the age of 31 years complaines to me of the shortness of his Breath he shews his Legs to be puffed up and his Belly to be swollen And he saith that his Cod was swelled to the bigness of ones Head For I saw that he had a face bespotted with red pricks or spects as it were with the marks of stripes He as yet celebrated the Masse yet with difficulty presently after three dayes from thence he suddenly dieth but he being dissected his Belly was found to be without water But in his Breast much Blood had choaked him And
that the Liver being cooled doth afterwards generate the more cold Blood for all Blood being deprived of vital spirit naturally waxeth cold because it is a dead carcase But that a more cold Liver doth melt fleshes into a Dropsical water that can be founded upon no reason 18. The Schooles cannot deny but that a Dropsie is sometimes solved by the Kidneys But there is no reason why the Reines do stubornly close themselves even untill Death because the Liver was more cold than was meet Let these arguments onely as yet suffice the Humourists which are distempered with cold that the Liver may be from a mortal offence Now I will over-add somethings concerning the occasional Cause I will therefore resume the fact of our Treasurer who shewed nothing memorable in this dissection beside Blood out-hunted and hardned in his Kidney to be the occasional Cause of his Dropsie and Death yet while the Stone plentifully stopping the Kidney doth not produce a Dropsie yea although the whole Kidney shall wax brawnie or hard with little Stones and shall reserve nothing of its substance besides skin Therefore the obstruction of the Kidney as such is not the occasional cause of Dropsie But the out-chased venal Blood For so the Woman of Sixty years old having dashed her self against a corner of the Table contracted a Dropsie So those that are wounded in their Abdomen and badly Cured do become Hydropical So out-chased venal Blood lighting and laying on the Menynx or Coate of the Brain doth presently render the countenance swollen with a Dropsie So at length great gripings of the Guts do pour forth Blood out of the Veins into the space bordering on the hollow bending Bowel So those that have the Bloodie-flux And so Drinkers do enter into a Dropsie as something of blood is co-heaped in the hollow Bought of the Bowel But this thing I learned in a Fracture of the Scull and in a Dropsie of the Lungs For there the Blood making oftimes a stop blows up the whole Head and Face as it were with a Dropsie But here I have observed the Blood to have consisted or remained about the conduit of the arterial Vein for neither doth the venal blood degenerate in the form of corrupt Pus unless it be cocted in the hollowness of the Flesh but without the Flesh in a free place the Blood presently waxeth clottie and straight way after it being made more dry is hardened and presently conceives a Poysonous ferment Whence the Archeus stirs up a Dropsie Indeed our Treasurer hath taught me that the blood being hunted out and become clotty causeth a Dropsie of the Belly and besides that the Kidney is an Adequate or suitabl Aertificer Causer Executer and Judge or Arbitratour of a true Dropsie That thing hath confirmed it to me because at the time of a Dropsie the Kidney scarce makes Urine and on the other hand because the Kidney being excited to restore the Urine himself doth empty the whole Dropsie out of the Belly Wherefore also that the water is brought back into the Abdomen by the arbitration of the Kidney Vain therefore is the devise of Paracelsus that the Star Zedo is the one only and singular Architector of the Dropsie For the cause is in our innermost parts and in the very Beginnings of Life but not to be so far fetched and Cured For the Dropsie is not the workmanship of the Stars neither is there such an ordination of the Stars neither is that of concernment although Mercurie being seperated dead from its Vein doth truly and perfectly cure the threefold Dropsie For Mercurie is an Analogical and feigned Name neither doth it denote a Star but a running Mettal For what doth a Name that is Metaphorically feigned belong unto the feigned Star of Zedo For metallick Mercury is neither a Star nor kills a Star nor hinders its operation nor dis-joynes the conjunction of a Star with us if there were any For the Stars are the occasions of Meteors but of Diseases occasions onely by accident For primarily they are the Causes of times or seasons and of the Blas of a Meteor but secondarily and by accident they disturbe our Bodies proyoke Diseases or ripen the occasional matter But Causes by accident do not respect Cures but fore-cautions especially where Causes per se or by themselves do operate with or in us by a proper motion and appointment of their own seeds For indeed the left Kidney of the Treasurer is stuffed or condensed with the more dry Blood the left part of his Abdomen is extended and presently waxeth hard the right part being safe His Leg also presently swels and afterwards his Thigh on his left side and therefore the extension of his Belly is extended not by reason of the quantity of water onely but his Membranes are extended from the Disease it self no otherwise than as the Artery under a hard pulse But the Membranes are extended and contracted also before a plenty of water by the same workman which begets the Dropsie Indeed it contracts all the pores of the Membrane that they cannot transmit or send the Wind or Liquor thorow them when as otherwise in those that are alive that is healthy the whole Body is perspirable and conspirable or inspirable The Treasurer therefore first of all makes a little water the Dropsie straightway invades him by degrees and begins on his left Side And therefore presently after its Beginning his left Leg is besieged by an Oedema and afterwards his whole Body becomes swollen But why doth not his right Kidney draw the Urine nor transmit it the which otherwise happens when but one Kidney is besieged by the Disease of the Stone For therefore there is a double Kidney by Nature and a single Spleen or Milt that one may relieve another in their troubles and banishments of an Excrement Yea and from hence it is sufficiently manifest that the Spleen is not a sink nor emunctory Therefore in the Blood being chased out of the Veins deteined and condensed there is an exciting ferment such as is wanting to the Stone I will therefore declare the whole order of the matter so far as my Observation hath taught me For the Liquor Latex unknown to the Schooles as long as it is carried with the Blood in the Veins or to the Glandules it enjoyes a common life neither doth it obey the rules of water-drawing Organs But it knowes not upwards and downwards because it hath it not But it being once rejected out of the fellowship of Life now it undergoes the nature of an Excrement and hastens downwards as being burthened with its own weight Therefore the Latex is of a vile esteem And therefore as oft as every Bowel is ill affected it presently neglects the Latex and excludes it from the company of its Venal Blood and findes business enough for it self at home for its own defence The Latex therefore being once divorced elsewhere and spoiled of the society of Life doth presently receive
his tender branches Presently after that in Youth the Idea's of Consideration or Judgement do begin to grow the which although they are for the most part as yet guiltless yet when the Idea's of any Passion being introduced by the hand of Inclinations shall associate themselves to these then the former Idea's are pierced by the stronger to wit of Hatred Love Revenge Luxury c. But if a notable Fear shall happen from thence so vehement an Idea ariseth that it inflicts a violent sickness with a perpetual faint-heartedness But the mildest of Idea's are those of Love Joy and Desire which at length delight with their sweetness and do so ensnare the whole Soul that they continually gape after Delights and Pleasures The more violent Idea's are those of Anger Sorrow Agony Envy Fear Arrogancy Despite Terrour Revenge Drunkenness or Sottishness Jealousie and Despair Where also this is to be noted That Agony is not a co-striving of Hope and Fear alone but also of Anger and Fear of Anger and Dissimulation of Hope and Anger of Hatred and Fear of Hope and Sorrow c. For as there is contrariety in conceptions alone so also in Idea's from thence bred And those which are not contrary are contracted and do pierce each other But contrary Idea's do destroy each other the which shall at sometime in the curing of Diseases be made manifest by Histories As many Idea's therefore as do pierce each other and co-suffer do arise together into Unity the prevalency of the stronger Idea being retained But sudden Idea's are the most cruel and most deadly of all because they shake the Imaginative faculty at unawares and so do as it were defile the whole Archeus And then daily Idea's succeed these because by a certain accustomedness they are made household-thieves have known the Treasures and Cloisters of these Hence a strong custome binds the mind as the Idea's conceived in the inflowing Archeus do at length also defile the Spirit implanted in the parts For indeed the Idea's of inclinations unto Virtue are supernaturally given after that the whole Nature is corrupted by sin But they are implanted in us by the seminal Idea's of the Parents for Morality Arts and Defects or being instilled into us from our Childhood by Education they depart into Nature as they pierce the native Idea's and do co-unite with the same But there are affections of a proper name the Products of Inclinations Passions and the Exercises of Affections and they do not happen without a new Propagation of Idea's And the which therefore like the life do prepare in us a natural habitation and disposition But Passions are the internal Motions of the Mind about the Bridles whereof whole Stoicisme is conversant At length Perturbations or Disturbances are Passions being Idea's stirred up for the most part by extrinsecal or forreign Causes And the common Mother of all Passions is Desire For this is in it self either good or evil For that Desire which is indifferent or neutral doth most easily put on the corruption of Nature and is perverted But the one only Remedy of evil Desires is the Resignation of the Will Because Desire is bred after this manner For corrupted Nature is now naturally turned on it self and therefore it willingly meditates on things plausible to it self as it is continually busied about the Objects of the Concupiscence of Sin And as Fire is struck out of a Flint so is Desire from the plausibility of the Object Whereunto unless thou dost insert the Fear of the Lord by way of a Graft which therefore is the Beginning of Wisdome for a Bridle or shalt cut off the plausibility of conceits in its budding of the first Conceptions it now finds a fewel in corrupted Nature Lewdness grows being not yet apparent by reason of its smallness and presently draws the whole Soul under it So that it becomes enslaved unto that Appetite by which it was expelled from its Throne of Majesty Suppose thou if Ambition or a greater Concupiscence do wax hot in the Frying-pan of Desire those things are either possible in hope without hope or against hope If man persisteth in his Desire these two latter will make him mad or besides himself Seeing every Desire of corrupt Nature hath alwayes something of foolishness and anguish annexed unto it But if indeed the end of a Desire be with hope it is carried at leastwise on an Object not yet present and then impossible and so it hath a disdainful expectation and a troublesome companion For we desire those things which are not Therefore a painful Desire is also for the most part of its own nature evil and from its affect far worse and at length from its consequence evil Because the Desires do presently decline into Anger Hatred Revenge Frowardnesses Crabbishnesses Un-sufferance Arrogancy Contempt c. For a natural Desire doth always rush into that which is worse because it descends from self-love is formed by corrupt Nature and is for the most part conversant about the Objects of sin doth accompany Anguishes Expectations and Troubles and bow down the liberty of Willing But so far as it is reflected beyond it self and on a future thing it brings forth Impatience affects a Liberty resisteth Mortification It brings Frowardnesses Perplexities Un-sufferance and now and then Despaire A good Desire is always given by Grace from Above whose Product is Love and an endeavour producing the Perfection of the Soul Vitrues therefore as they come from Grace they transcend from the imaginative faculty together with their Idea's into the understanding and so they tinge the Soul even as also the vices of Passions the exercises of Sin and of withdrawing from the Fear of the Lord do tinge the Soul that it becomes as it were beast-like Hence are ravening Wolves generations of Vipers tell ye that Fox c. Therefore sins of Commission will sometimes be conspicuous in the Soul without the search of a diligent enquiry But sins which are meerly negative because they are not Beings nor have any thing of actuality they do not tinge or stain the Soul such as are sins of Omission and therefore these onely shall be upbraided as faults in the last Judgment when as other sins shall be distinguished by the sight alone Furthermore although God be no accepter of persons yet because he disposeth of all things sweetly according to his good pleasure he loveth women after a peculiar manner not onely because he hath surrounded them with very many Diseases arising from their womb Perplexities Miseries and Tribulations for the Lord saith to the Woman I will multiply thy Sorrows but especially because he hath for a comfort requited them with the gift of Devotion For from hence do arise Idea's of Compassion of Miseries toward their neighbours of Meeknesse Contrition and Compunction the which for a foundation do precede the Fear of the Lord and Charity For that Devotion although it be sexual is the gift of Grace gaining Grace or
history of a Disease manifest by one Example For in the Stone a Disease it is most material and manifest but the Stone is not the Disease but the primary Lithiasis or Stony affect and the true Disease Duelech is the Idea it self radically implanted in the powers of the Archeus of the Kidneys or Bladder The which indeed is wanting in healthy Persons and therefore neither doth it in healthy folkes regularly frame actuate or separate out of the Urine the which Urine notwithstanding doth contain materially in it all things actually necessary unto a Stone a Stone or sand existing therein by an immediate possibility But Ferments being once introduced into the Archeus of the Reins and subordinate parts an actuating and fashoning Idea of that is there established which lurked by a near power in the matter And thus is a Stone or Sand made which are the product of a true Lithiasis That Idea I say inhabiting in the implanted Archeus of those parts is the Diseasie Separater and Work-man commanding the implanted faculty of that Organ and which leads it bound at its own erroneous pleasure There is also a more eminent power of a seminal and fermental Idea brought on the implanted and vital faculty of the Reines But the product proceeding from this primary Disease in the way of generation is the monster Duelech it self The same thing is equally manifest in other Diseases at least by two suppositions To wit one that every Disease is in a live Being and so in the Archeus the Mover but not in a Being by it self dead and unmoved The other is that a Disease is a substantial Being by it self subsisting in us Whence I conclude that a Disease after the manner of other natural Beings proceeds from a Non-being unto a Being and is seminally bred The which I thus prove mechanically A Bean as it is the most notable of seeds is a subject of demonstration For herein shadowy Idea's do concurre being co-created with it presently after the beginning of the World and by propagation seminally co-bred there-with Because between the two Plates which constitute the Body of the Bean the flourish or beginning of a bud is found having two leaves with a root wherein the seminal Idea doth shadowily sleep And it is fast tyed unto both the Plates of the Bean as it were to both sexual Beginnings No otherwise than as the more thick white doth adhere unto the yolk of an Egge which containeth the perfect act of a seed The Bean therefore being committed to the Earth doth presently drink up either the actual or vaporous Liquor of the Earth and swells up there-with But the Earth hath in it its own putrefaction by continuance or a faculty of imprinting a fermental odour in respect whereof a power motive is conferred on it of a voluntary budding without a visible seed being committed unto it By consequence the juice of the Earth being imbibed the same fermental virtue is delivered unto this Bean which is otherwise unto the Earth Which juice having in it self a fermental putrefaction through continuance determined or limited by the specifical odour of the Bean doth stirr up the Idea of the seed laying hid in the Bean which afterwards proceedeth to act of its own free accord Wherefore the bud is not bred the which else the Earth of that place had produced of its self but from the intrinsecal and invisible seminal Idea of the Bean the bud is bred or born which is the Herb Bean Yet so as that the specifical faculty of the Herb is inclined according to the disposition of the ferment of the hoary putrifaction of the Earth Hence indeed wine varies in divers places although the vine be planted of the same branch For so seeds do flow into their appointed Offices fruits and ends which thing I will explain in a Cancer First of all a true Cancer doth never arise but in the Dug and Womb of the Women but the Idea's of a Cancer are not in and do not sleep in the Womb Even as otherwise the Idea's of a Bean in the bud of a Bean because Diseases indeed are naturally made but are not naturally in unless perhaps from the seed of the generater Idea's are co-bred as in hereditary Diseases and that is the difference of the Beings of creation from the Beings of Diseases I suppose therefore for the occasion of a Cancer that the Dugs of a Woman do suffer a co-pressing and confusion or bruising and the Glandules the effectresses of milk are co-shaken or dashed And then the sensitive Archeus implanted in that Organ conceives pain as it were a pricking thorne Therefore the shaking and pain do mutually co-touch in the act of feeling And an unnamed furious passion riseth up in stead of a ferment as it were fire out of a flint and steel Hence a fiery seminal Idea mad or raging and therefore poysonsome is struck out is imbibed and co-fermented with the juice of the place Whence then at length there is a painful pricking beating tumour because it is also poysonous from fury The Archeus therefore is stirred up and made wrothful according to the disposition of the conceived indignation for neither do all things grow generally every where but here grasses do spring up without bidding there more succesfully grapes else where treeie sprouts so neither doth the Archeus see in the finger even as he doth in the eye The Archeus therefore winds up the poyson gotten by his own indignation in that bunch of the thorny pain as the Archeus hath there so married himself unto the Paps that no part of these doth want him But that swelling is the product of the Cancer seminated or sown in the indignation as well of the Cancer essentially as being that Cancer which afterwards flows abroad stinking with sanies or thin corrupt matter For neither are Ulcers or Apostems in the Dugs ever Cancerous unless that fury of the Archeus shall be present Therefore a seminal Image rising up from the turbulent tempest of the Archeus and decyphered in the Archeus of the place is a true Cancer whether there shall as yet be an Aposteme or in the next place an Ulcer For the Archeus of the Paps being their vital mover acting to wit in that part the Sergeantship of the furious Womb being tossed with furies doth locally stamp his poysonous Idea's and imprints them on himself by the same right whereby the imaginative faculty doth frame likenesses agreeable unto its own passions No otherwise I say than as the Womb Heart Brain Stomach than the propagative seminal faculty of Vegetables it self yea nor otherwise than as it clearly appear in the very excrements of Simples to wit in the Spittle of a mad Dog So I say a Cancer is bred and doth propagate its own Idea's on the immediate similar nourishment For the primary or first Cancer in the Archeus of the place through a dependent connexion of contagion is further extended into the co-bordering part
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
But Herbes are gathered and Roots are digged up in a station wherein there is the more of vigor and therefore also presently after Sun-rising For things Injected are driven forth no otherwise than as a Snake from the Fire But Divines are wont to consume things Injected which are rejected in the Fire for a disgrace of the evil Spirit Those things indeed do thus rightly perish yet the relapsing returns thereof are not thus hindred Therefore things Injected which were expelled are more rightly involved and kept in Simples in any whereof there is an expulsive force With the like reason whereby Sympathetical Remedies do cure an absent Wound do these endowed Simples drive away things Injected do detain and restrain them that they are not Injected and do delude the vain endeavour of the Magitian The weaknesse therefore of an in-darting Being is deservedly suspected which cannot send in things that are to be cast into the Body because a certain hindering Herb is present and President Therefore the force which derives things Injected inwards is not that of the Prince of this World and of a most powerful Spirit But that of a certain Ideal and more infirm Being which doth so easily hinder all enterance for the future CHAP. LXXXII Of Things Conceived or Conceptions 1 The Spleen is the Seat of the first Conceptions 2. As well the Idea's of the Immagination as Archeal ones do issue from the Spleen their Fountain 3. Therefore also they smell of an Hypocondrial faculty or quality 4. The Plague alwaies begins about the Stomack 5. Of soulified Conceptions 6. Idea's from the Womb. 7. Madnesses 8. A mad Irreligion 9. The reality of Conceptions in respect of the Matter and efficient Cause 10. Presumption doth blind almost all mortal Men. 11. An occult madnesse 12. Diseasie Conceptions 13. Diseases of the Womb. 14. Womb Phantasies 15. An instruction of every Monarchy 16. A double Government in a Woman 17. The Womb is not ill at ease but from things conceived 18. The Female Sex is miserable 19. Diseases of the Womb differ from their Products 20. The Cure of its last or utmost Fury 21. A twofold Idea of things Conceived 22. The rise and progresse of a Feverish Dotage 23. The progresse of Idea's unto their maturities 24. The Entry of all good is in Faith 25. The flourishing of Passions MOreover a Diseasie Being is like unto things Injected the which I call that of things conceived For although this Being doth not come to us from without nor is nourished from elsewhere Yea neither doth Satan co-operate with it yet because it doth not much differ in its root manner of making and a certain likeness dâ—â—fects from some Injected things I have not unadvisedly referred things Conceived among Spiritual things Received Unto the clearing up whereof I have already premised many Prologues Wherefore I have already elsewhere demonstrated the Imaginative Power of the first Conceptions to be in the Spleen and that it is from thence extended unto the Stomack the companion of the Duumvirate and that also it is hence easily and originally in the other Sex extended unto the Womb. The Spleen therefore is as well the Fountain of Idea's Conceived in the imaginative faculty of a man as of the Archeus himself The Archeus hath his own and peculiar Imaginations proper unto him for whether they are the Phantasies of a true Name or onely Metaphorical ones it is all one to me in this place for the sake whereof he continually feels Antipathies and self-loves and from thence stirs up derived motions Surely the Conceptions of the Archeus doe forthwith attain the most powerful determinations in the aforesaid places Because they smell of their native place they are Hypocondriacal Qualities they bear the Monuments of the first and undistinct motions And although a soulified immagnation which is there delayed without the strength of impression or the inclination of any prejudiced thing may be at length made as it were sleepy undistinct and almost confused wherefore indeed times do seldome wax gray or old with carelesness yet those which in the very shops of the first Motions receive the deliberation of some Passion do also allure unto them the Spirits made old in the Brain do undergo the contagion of the place and are made and forged by the Judgement of a deprived Idea and do seminally bring forth affects co-agreeing with their Causes To wit those which are suspected of Hypocondrial madness confusion and disturbance For therefore we do all of us suffer every one his own anguishes of mind Yet the already mentioned Archeal imagination as it neither desireth the consent of the Soul so neither doth it exspect it and therefore it happens unsensibly and without our knowledge Therefore indeed the Plague whether it be made from a terrour conceived in the Soul or next from a proper Vice of the Archeus yet it alwayes holds its first consultations about the Orifice of the Stomack For the Idea's of the Archeus are most powerful also the most fierce ones of Diseases Because they being irrational do happen unto us without our knowledge and against our will and therefore also incorrigible and are for the most part out-laws and do therefore invade us after an unthought of manner I will now treat of soulified Conceptions because they are the more distinct and sensible ones whosoever they be which do as it were weaken insatuate and now and then enchant themselves with the perturbations of the first motions and the conceived Idea's of these they afford a fit occasion unto the aforesaid Causes And although this kind of Vice doth sometimes invade even learned and judicious Men produceth foolishnesses and crabbishnesses Yet it is more social unto a Woman by reason of the agreement and nearnesse of affinity of her Womb. Indeed the Womb although it be a meer Membrane yet it is another Spleen And therefore it doth as it were by a proper instinct of the Seed presently wrap it self in the external Secundines of the young as it were another Spleen As elsewhere in its place Not indeed that a Woman doth by this Vice of Nature forge execrable Hypocondrial Idea's for the destruction of others after the manner of Witches but they are hurtful onely to themselves and do as it were inchant and infatuate and weaken themselves For they stamp Idea's on themselves whereby they no otherwise than as Witches driven about with a malignant Spirit of despair are oftentimes governed or are snatched away unto those things which otherwise they would not and do bewail unto us their own and unvoluntary madness For so as Plutarch witnesseth a desire of Death by hanging took hold of all the young Maids in the Island of Chios neither could it be stayed but by shame or bashfulness sore threatned unto them after death Seeing therefore the Vice of things Conceived doth also touch men let the Reader be averse to wearisomness if it shall behove me to stay the longer in these things who
thing or effect causing neither the former madness in the root so also neither reaching to it but only aggravating it For the curing of madness arising from things conceived in the Womb requires an extinguishment of the fury of the Idea conceived by appropriated Secrets or Arcanums for they cannot be overcome by opposite Idea's seeing the Woman is now uncapable to form Idea's that are wholesome for her self so long as she is restrained by the fury of her Womb and afterwards a rectifying of the Organ for otherwise the madness doth very easily return Hellebore indeed which is wont of old to be singularly commended for madness doth lighten the weightiness of conceptions in as much as it takes away some what from the aggravating product but surely it cures it not but in nature sitting and that helps it self as a mad Person who hath become mad by a proper doting Being arising out of the proper Idea's of his own excrement Notwithstanding the foolishness which hath arisen from a sudden perturbation although it may oft-times depart by such a Remedy Nature by its goodness buisily supplying the rest to wit the Spleen and Brain being cherished or fomented if they shall the more slowly proceed unto a recovery but because the madnesses of conceptions do arise from mental Idea's hence they do so deeply pierce that they do also radically defile the fructifying Seed in its Spirit and the madness of the generater is traduced on the posterity Therefore an Idea conceived in the imagination of the sensitive Soul is twofold For there is a certain one which proceedeth from the diseasie Seeds of things For we see a Calfe to grow mad and a Dog to die with madness likewise a Wolfe that is mad every year to be restored by incredible fasting The which Paracelsus ridiculously ascribeth unto the slow Star of Orion I say it proceeds occasionally the Power of a forreign Seed being introduced into us until our Archeus doth borrow from thence the Idea's of fury the which himself stirs up on himself and himself cloaths himself withall Indeed there are Idea's in some Simples which do naturally infatuate not indeed that they naturally destroy the temperature of the Brain Because it is that which doth clearly understand without a temperature and those temperaments are meer dreams but because they confer there own Ideal character and do occasionally imprint it on the Spirit the instrument of the imagination and stir up Idea's agreeable to their own Idea's For so the Poyson of the Tarantula or Dog do propagate determined and their own only and proper befoolments And so those that are careless having taken in some Simples do become mad according to their inbred Idea's The other madness therefore of conceptions doth arise from things bred within So in the first place Dotages in a Fever are not from things assumed but from excremental Idea's degenerated within And there is moreover a twofold variety of Idea's conceived within One madness indeed being sprung from mad Idea's through a wandering abuse of the imaginative Power doth seal it self in the Archeus and so from its resembling mark doth pierce deeper and continually or repeatingly extends it self on the Life but the other madness is bred in feverish and hostile excrements as in the same some like thing doth occur the which we have known naturally to inhabit in the aforesaid Simples And therefore these kind of madnesses because they are entertained in a corporal forreign and hateful Being they do not so deeply pierce into the inbred Archeus of the imaginative Power For at first Feverish Filths do bring forth un-sleepinesses afterwards dreams interrupted by wakings and at length more continual ones the labour and tiresomeness whereof do produce their own Idea's in the excrements from whence doting dreams opposite to waking ones are seen For if dotish furies should be bred in Fevers from Simples or Excrements mocking with a similitude of proportion certainly Dotages should assault us in the first fit neither should they expect a heap of dayes unless the Idea's of the tiresomeness and labour of dreams should manifestly engender a dotage What if draming Idea's do cut asunder the cords of judgment what shall not the Idea's of Apprehensions Affections Passions and Considerations beget or cause especially as oft as they being advanced to the height do defile the Archeus by violently corrupting or fermentally bespattering of him for the three former are scarce stirred up of their own accord but are moved and provoked by some foregoing passion For an abusive perswasion and credulity or esteem of falshood do at first seduce a man into a despising presumption of others or into an indignation of self-love anger hatred or wrathfulness towards his Neighbour From whence indeed there is also an unbelieving Religion Superstition Scrupulousness Impenitent Arrogancy and Drunken desparation together with Carelesseness For as Faith is the gate unto Humility which is the truth of the Intellect or Understanding So a credulous esteem or judgment of Falshood is the entrance of Presumption and Arrogancy and the first madness of the Soul For therefore among Miracles one that was foolish from things imagined is scarce read to have been restored to health because such do for the most part become foolish from an impenitent pride and refusing to return into the Truth But disturbances as Love Desire Sorrow Fear Terrour are especially stirred up by extrinsecal occasions and therefore they do produce their Effects not only in the Soul but also in the Body For all Passions do in their Beginning take away sleep and then they do at first weaken the desired act of eating And at length through a long immoderate strong or sudden inordinacy their Idea's do infatuate the Archeus The strength whereof is not elsewhere to be measured than from an exact piercing and co-mixture of them with a great or small quantity of the Archeus For the Soul apprehending or discoursing by little and little is accustomed to follow without strife whereby it is oftentimes and violently led aside willingly with plausibility or unwillingly by reason of a superiority of apprehensions For the Soul is made conscious of that journey although a straying one because an accustomed one And deviations are manifest â—â—d hidden or unknown continual or those renewed afresh Indeed the manifest ones do presently bewray their excentricalness of madness it being conspicuous in all things and about all things but the more occult and hidden ones do not appear but in some points and conceptions to wit whereby the Soul hath been once shaken out of its place and the judgment sorely shaken whose Idea's have indeed been imprinted on the Organ by reason of a dayly continuance or plausibility that is by reason of strength and superiority But in the other points they seem rightly to perceive But as to that which concerns the curing of conceptions I profesly deliver the same hereafter in a Chapter by itself and in a Theme or Argument plainly Paradoxal But
mishapen And so in the next place Diseases do vary in respect of a six-fold Digestion being hindred inverted suspended extinguished or vitiated Diseases also do vary in respect of the distribution of that which is digested For a proportioned distribution doth exercise the force of distributive Justice due to every part But if they are disproportioned now there is an infirm and necessitated distribution and that as well in respect of the natural functions which are never idle as of a continual transpiration and from thence for the sake of an uncessant necessity But that disproportion is voluntary and as it were an overflowing distribution in respect of a symptomatical expulsion by reason of a conspirable animosity of the disturbing Archeus or at length the distribution is disproportioned as it is necessitated in respect of penury or scantiness whence at length also no seldom dammage invadeth the whole Body To wit while in some part the nourishment degenerateth is ejected and so is wasted Such as is the Consumptionary spittle in Affects or Ulcers of the Lungs a Snivelly Glew in the Stone in the Gonorrhea or running of the Reines c. For seeing the part its nourishment being once defiled and degenerate is thenceforth never nourished but despiseth and thrusts that forth yet by reason of a sense of penury that ceaseth not continually with importunity to crave new nourishment from the dispensing faculty and to obtain it by its importunity that it may satisfie its thirst Therefore new nourishment is many times administred unto it and is withdrawn from its other chamber-fellows because a sufficient nourishment for all parts is wanting From thence therefore is Leanness an Atrophia a Tabes or lingring Consumption and an impoverishment of all necessary nourishment So indeed Fluxes Bloody-Fluxes Aposthems Ulcers and Purgative things do make us lean and exhaust us For the infirm parts are like the Prodigal Son because they do waste and unprofitably cast away being those which have badly spent whatsoever was distributed unto them and the other parts do lament that lavishment Things Retained that are taken into the Body offend onely in quality or quantity or indiscretion or inordinacy For if they are immoderate in quantity if frequent or too rare for numbers are in quantities also one onely error doth sometimes give a beginning unto a Disease whereas in the mean time otherwise Nature makes resistance for some good while But Poysons received Solutive Medicines and likewise altering things which are too much graduated do chiefly hurt in quality Discretion also doth offend in things assumed if they are taken rashly out of their hour and manner As if the Menstrues be provoked in a Woman with young or in a Womb that doth excessively flow For indiscretion doth every where bring forth a frequent inordinacy when as any undue thing is cast into the Body or required the scopes of Causes and betokenings of being unknown Also harmless things which are cast into the Body are vitiated onely by their delay and long continuance of detainment And they become the more hostile by how much they shall be the more familiar or the further promoted for truly by reason of a mark of resemblance sometime conceived they do the sooner ferment and more deeply and powerfully imprint their enmities And as by things Assumed things Retained are sometimes at length made inbred So by things inbreathed Diseases are oft-times made like unto those made by things Retained For some inspired things are Retained and do affect the same parts which things Retained do Otherwise they differ in their internal Root as much as breath doth from drink and as much as food from blood But before I descend unto inbred Retentions it is necessary to represent the unknown Tragedy of the chief or primary Diseases Because inbred Retents do for the most part take their beginning from primary Diseases For indeed I have already before distinguished of all Diseases that they do either affect the Archeus implanted in or inflowing into the parts Although in both cases Diseases do proceed by the forming of Idea's The which I will have to be understood of primary ones To wit out of whose bosom superfluities do arise or degenerate which give an occasion for new Idea's or onsets of Diseases For it is scarce possible that the Archeus being remarkeably smitten by a voluntary Idea of a Man or the Archeus a lot of Disaster should not arise in the inferiour family-administration of the Body from whence the Digestions themselves first of all wandering from their scope do frame the pernitious collections of Superfluities whereby the primary distemperatures of the Archeus are nourished to wit if they shall proceed from the same root That is if the root of a primary Disease shall produce its like to wit the former Idea of exorbitancy persisting or the new off-springs of Diseases are stirred up But at leastwise after either manner the aforesaid Excrements are the Products of primary or the chief Diseases But primary Diseases are either of Idea's Archeizated to wit by the proper substance of the influous Archeus issuing into the composure of the Body the which indeed he by reason of his madness wasts And such kind of Diseases are oft-times appeased by Opiates yea are also utterly rooted out Because they are for the most part the off-springs of a more sluggish turbulency The flame of the chaffe either ceasing from a voluntary motion or being silent at the consuming of the Archeus informed by the vitiated Idea But Idea's arising from the implanted afflictions of the vital Spirits whether they are the governing Spirits of the similar or organical parts they do for the most part disturb the family-administration of Life especially if the Archeus being badly disquieted in some principal bowel shall form the Idea's of his own hurt For then he brings forth most potent afflictions Yea sometimes those remaining safe for term of Life For as they are the Rulers of a greater nobleness and more eminent power So also they draw forth the more efficacious Idea's and do propagate Diseases of a prostrating nature Because the Powers themselves the In-mates of the more noble parts are defiled with the same Images as it were with Seals the which diseasie Products arising from thence the foot-step of the Seal being as it were received into themselves do afterwards linkingly expresse through the ranks of the Digestions For so the primary Diseases of the Bowels do abound neither do they hearken unto Remedies but of a more piercing wedlock yea and do bequeath their inheritances on Nephews The Arcanums of which sort I have reckoned up in the Book of Long Life to wit the which do every one of them represent the Majesty of an universal Medicine Although I will not deny but that there is that Majesty in some the more refined Simples which can heal particular primary Diseases The Galenists do laugh at the promise of a generality but every Bird doth utter his voice according to
and double Fevers Neither doth it also forbid a primary Disease to be con-folded with its own or with a secundary one bred from else where In such a manner as is a primary Fever which brings forth a Product from whence there is a resolving of the Blood into the putrifying Disease of a malignant Flux matched with a feverish Ferment At length neither is there a necessary passage of the three first Digestions unto the sixth by the fourth and fifth Because the greatest part of the venal Blood never comes unto the Heart and much less is it snatched into its left Bosom Because all particular parts are nourished no less with Venal than Arterial Blood From hence indeed it happens that the Vices of the three first Digestions do oftentimes immediately pass over into the sixth And therefore the transchanged Retents of the three first Digestions if they shall reach unto the sixth they offend not by transmission of a proper name but only by transmutation because a transmission from the third into the sixth Digestion is regular lawful and ordinary I will add concerning the Spleen If from the first Digestion a sharpness of the Chyle be immediately brought unto the Spleen A Quartane Ague is soon present to wit from a curdled Retent being there a stranger But if the sixth Digestion in the Spleen be troubled seeing it is the Couch of the first Conceptions The Excrements or things transchanged which are made of its proper nourishment are for the most part endowed with an imaginative Power such as occurs in many Simples and which is most plainly to be seen in the Spittle of a mad Dog and the which therefore I call inebriating or be-drunkening dreamifying or befooling Simples For therefore of one Wine there is a many-form condition of drunken Men That is one only Wine doth stir up diverse Madnesses For a mad Poyson halts with the similitude of Wine For a mad Poyson by reason of its excelling Power doth not follow the conditions of the Man but the very Conditions of the Man are constrained to obey the Poyson As is clearly seen in the Poyson of him that is bitten by a Mid-dog Poysons therefore which of a degenerate nourishment are bred in the sixth Digestion do follow their own Nature For by how much the nearer they shall be unto assimilating by so much the more powerfully do they infatuate For by how much the nearer the Ferment of the Bowel and an in-beaming of the implanted Spirit shall be present with it by so much also the nearer it calls unto it the Idea of a certain imaginative Power which at length it transplanteth into a venemous Poyson not indeed so destructive unto the Life as unto the Power of that Bowel But from what hath been before declared any one shall be hereafter able to erect unto himself the Stages of Diseases But it hath been sufficient for me to have shewn that every primary Disease doth objectively and subjectively fall into the Archeus and so into the Life it self whereof to wit it is immediately formed But that a secondary Disease fals objectively indeed into the Archeus but subjectively into a Matter either the solid one of the part containing or the fluide one of that contained And thus indeed to have shewn Diseases to be distributed in Nature by their Causes Roots and Essence according to their Inns I repose my Pen. Barrenness also seeing it is among Defects beside Nature hath hither extended its Treatise Wherefore Coldness Heat or moistness is not in either of the Sexes the cause of Barrenness however lowdly others may sound out this thing For truly first of all there is no dryness possible in living Creatures or the vitious moisture of the Womb is not of the complexion but a meer superfluity of Digestion or Transmission So in the next place Heat and Cold are signs of Defects in Nature but not Causes Because these Qualities do want a Seed vital Properties and potestative Conditions Therefore indeed Barrenness and Fruitfulness is in every Climate of the World Yet an Aethiopian Woman is far hotter than the most hot Woman of Muscovia But the excrementitious and superfluous Moistness of the Womb is an Effect of Diseases Yea if it shall be a companion of Barrenness yet not the containing Cause thereof For an internal Cause differs not from the Being it self So neither is the Defect of the Menstrues the cause of Barrenness if that Defect contains a denial or proceeds as an Effect of a nearer Indisposition Women of unripe Age have oft-times conceived even also before their Menstrues and those of more ripe years their Menstrues being silent Also oft-times Women affected in their Womb being trampled on by many Perplexities do succesfully conceive and accordingly bring forth In the mean time some Barren Women are in good health Also many conceive while their Menstrues is urgently present As also the Menstrues being afterwards silent hath deceived many of Conception Some Women do take notice of their Menstrues all the time of their bearing but many for some months only For indeed although Barrenness may after some sort bespeak a privative respect yet it is meerly a positive and diseasie Being for it ariseth from singular positive Defects Because by it self and in self it is a Malady of Nature Even as fruitfulness bespeaks an entire Cause For in a Man which is not Gelded not an Eunuch not hindred or disturbed not mischieved Barrenness hath scarce place For from hence an Old-man doth as yet generate Whence it follows that there is not so much perfection to be attributed as neither to be required in the Male as in the Mother But I call those hindered Males who do labour with a Gonorrhea or who have from thence retained a Vice And likewise who do labour with the notable Vice of some Bowel In a Woman the Menstrues abounding being Deficient Irregular Watery Yellow looking Blackish Slimy Stinking a Pain in her Loyns Belly Hips and movings of the Womb upwards downwards to the Sides are indeed Witnesses and Signs of the Sicknesses or Feeblenesses of the Womb and therefore also they fore-slow overflow Conception move Abortions and gushings forth of the Courses yet they do not altogether take away the hope of Conception nor are they the Disease which is called Barrenness For indeed old Women are Barren without all those For I find the one only suitable and co-equal Cause in Time and Age to be described in the holy Scriptures for a positive Being which is called Barrenness in these Words God opened the Womb of Sarah For it is the Gift of God derived into Nature whereby the Parchment or Membrane of the Womb being most exactly shut in its Foldings is opened and enlarged at the co-agreeing moment of Conjunction There is I say an attractive drawing Blas whereby for fear of a Vacuum or Emptiness an attraction of the Seeds and a suitable filling up of the opened Wrinckles follows that opening To wit the
proper unto no nourishment which was unto that Apple so that it not only begat Seed in our first Parents a few hours after but also Dispositions to obtain by request a sensitive Soul from the Creator And that which otherwise happens in the Young in set Terms of Dayes and is perfected by certain degrees of Digestions that was presently compleated in the very vital Archeus of our first Parents And the Text doth insinuate that peculiar thing to be in the Apple because In the same day wherein he should eate of the Apple he should die the Death Because the Apple although it should anticipate or forestal the term of Dayes yet it should require a certaine term of Motion that after it should be turned into vital Blood it should also be endowed with a sensitive Soul For they who in the very point of Creation were formed into a Man and a Woman and not into Children in a short space also grew old or decayed on the same day into the maturity of Seeds and every necessity of Death and properties of second Causes For in a straight way all this falls perpendicularly or point blank on the post of the foundation of my Position on which the giddy or unconstant businesse of our Mortality is whirled about even unto this Day But at least-wise seeing Eve was made of the Rib of the Man that very thing doth insinuate a mark of Chastity and forbidden Copulation of the Flesh Because it is that which besides Whoredom contained Incest which thing was not hid from Adam Of which notwithstanding the Almighty after the fall of sin seemed to dispense withal granting Matrimony Therefore through occasion hereof it remaines diligently to search into whether the Act of Lust were compleated in Paradise Many will have Paradise to be free from filthiness because the Text saith Chap. 4. But Adam knew Eve his Wife who conceived and brought forth Cain saying I have possessed a Man by God But let these men pardon me For the contrary appeareth from the very Text. First of all The Text cited doth convince of nothing but that the ravishment of true Virginity because it is bloody doth not admit of Conception as a Companion And therefore Cain was not Conceived at the first turn but out of Paradise For otherwise 1. On the same day ye shall dye the death according to the truth of the Position denoteth that in the same place the filthiness was committed 2. The Woman is not called the Wife of Adam before the Fall as she is immediately after But the name of a Wife is not given not indeed unto Matrimony confirmed but onely unto it being finished 3. It was said onely to the Man Thou mayest not eat of this Tree Therefore it is read concerning the banishment of the Man to be made in the singular number Not indeed but that both Sexes sinned but because the Man had singularly deserved to be banished for his Whoredom 4. Therefore it is said Lest he stretch forth his hand unto the Tree of Life do eat of it and live for ever But it is not said least the Husband and Wife do eat 5. Adam at the first sight of the Beasts knew their Essences and Properties and also put right Names upon them But the Woman being seen he at first called her Wo-man because she was taken from Man But after the Fall he called her Hevah or The Mother of all living Because he at the first sight of her as yet knew not neither as yet had she that property from the Man and she learned it because she put it not on and stirred it not up but by sin For why had he changed the Essential Name of the Woman if she had not also changed her whole Nature 6. And next He with-drew her unto the Shrubs rather to commit his filthiness than for a cover of his shame For truly he might have covered his shame with Fig-leaves and have neglected his hiding through the Shrubs if he had not also had the signes of chastity corrupted 7. For truly if my Position be true That Death was caused onely through the Luxury of the Flesh His banishment followed not but after the act of filthiness 8. For he who but presently before knew not that he was naked After what manner did he presently know his Wife to be the Mother of all living unless he had committed something And Lastly The Text which saith unto the Serpent I will put enmities between the Seed of the Woman and thy Seed doth clearly denote that the Woman that before wanted Seed and altogether all the tickling thereof had now Seed However it is at least-wise I cannot but remarkeably admire the excellency of the Text which hath no where made even any deaf mention of the Concupiscence of the flesh but it every where covers the fowlness of the Flesh with the greatest silence by the obtained knowledge of the shame and involves an induced necessity of Death and a necessary requirance of Regeneration in the highest Mystery Determining that at length the fullness of dayes being compleated evil shall be spread out of the North over all the Inhabitants of the Earth The which I will by and by manifest Finally Nature being now degenerate it hath pleased the Almighty to raise up the Fall of Adam by Regeneration or a being born again And although he hath not restored unto us the antient clearness of Understanding and exquisite speculative knowledge of the Mind yet hath he raised up our dignity far higher For truly the Understanding being reduced by Grace into the obedience of Faith proceedeth in a humble resignation unto the victorious reward of Love whereby we are supported and constrained And the least abiding of that Love is far more glorious than the whole unoccupied life of Adam in Paradise For before the Fall Faith was unknown the race of Virtues especially also the superexcellency of Divine Love and they lived onely in the happiness of the purity of Innocency And therefore God by the permission of his fore-knowledge and ordination hath bound the unequality of blessednesse issuing or springing up from the new Birth with a certain excellency of Riches Because the Tribulations of his Life are not worthy to be compared unto the great or vast things which the goodness of God hath prepared for us that are renewed For I had rather know those things which God hath revealed by his onely begotten Son the Saviour of the World than to have known the faculties of Living Creatures and Herbs with a clear Understanding It being abundantly sufficient for me to have an Humanity in God whereby he hath adopted us for the Sons of God and made us far more like himself than Adam was in his greatest felicity CHAP. XCIII The Position is Demonstrated 1. A first Prooof of the Position 2. A second 3. The Divine manner of generating cannot be conceived by man 4. A conjecture from a like thing 5. A Repetition of Demonstrations 6.
Woman doth seminally conceive by Man besides the first intent of Creation Wherefore if Man were created that at least-wise from a foreknowledge of the consequence he might supply the Place of the Evil Spirits in Heaven he ought either to be created in a great Number at once from the Beginning or Successively If therefore They which are to be saved cannot be born by the will of Man of Flesh or of Blood and there was one only Man created therefore all Posterity ought by a successive Continuation to be born in Paradise of Women alone to wit the Birth-place of the Woman and of necessity to be Conceived from God and to be Born of a Woman a Virgin unto whom he afterwards Gave Power to be called the Sons of God and to be made with an exclusion of the Will of Blood Flesh and Man which Chastity alwayes pleased God doth please him at this Day and will please him alwayes And whatsoever hath thus once pleased the fountain of Chastity can never again displease him And so that Onely those that are of a clean Heart shall see God and shall be called his Sons wherefore the Prophet singeth Create in me a clean Heart Oh God! such as Adam had before the Fall And renew a right Spirit of the chaste and antient Innocency by the regeneration of the Spirit and Water in my Bowels Because my Bowels being now impure have contracted a Spirit of Concupiscence of the Flesh of Sin For indeed Man as long as he was Immortal and Pure Saw thy Face oh Lord and thou talkedst with him which Face afterwards Man shall not see and live But after that Man defiled his Bowels through Concupiscence thou casteth him from thy Face out of Paradise I pray thee therefore that thou cast me not from thy Face and that thou take not thy holy Spirit of Chastity from me Restore unto me the Gladness of the Regeneration of thy Salvation and with thy principal Spirit the Comforter do thou confirm me against the inbred Impurity of the Flesh For truly I shall teach the Unrighteous thy wayes of thy Regeneration the which among the hidden things of thy Wisdom thou hast manifested unto me and the Wicked shall be converted unto thee At leastwise free me from Bloods from the Concupiscence of the Sexes Thou who art the God of Chastity the God of Salvation as of new Regeneration and my Tongue shall exalt thy Righteousness and thy just Judgment whereby thou hast condemned Man who was born of Bloods and by the will of Man in the Concupiscente and of the Flesh of Sin as he hath made himself uncapable of thine Inheritance For loe in Iniquities aforesaid I was conceived and in Sins hath my Mother conceived me although under a lawful Marriage Bed Therefore I confess that besides the primitive scope of the Creator an Adamical Generation hath arisen into natural Death and is devolved into original Sin The Woman therefore as she hath conceived after a bruital manner she also began to bring forth in Pain The Male also in the Law was only circumcised as for a mystery of the deflowring of Eve Yet both Sexes ought to expiate the Offence committed in their privy Parts to wit whereby they had offended which thing although it be chastly insinuated in the Text Yet that was covered before Israel who were otherwise most ready for all Perfidiousness to wit that Godmight not seem a contemner of Matrimony instituted after the Fall The Woman therefore was not circumcised and yet she was saved but not the Pain of Child-birth or the Obedience of her Husband had expiated Original Sin in her For both a single young Virgin dying was saved as also a barren Wife Therefore from hence is manifested the mystery to wit that Eve so much as she could resisted the Insolencies of Adam and was by force deflowred in Paradise So that also our first Parents were Murderers of all their Posterity through Concupiscenc So also the eldest Son was a Brother-Killer For the fore-skin being taken away did of necessity cause a Brawniness of the Nut of the Yard whereby indeed he might be made a Partaker of the less Pleasure Concupiscence and Tickling whosoever should desire to be ascribed or registred among the Catalogue of the beloved People of God The Rabbins also confess That Circumcision was instituted by reason of unclean Virtues walking in a circuit The which I interpret that the diabolical and primitive Enticements of Concupiscence unto Mortality were not hid to the Hebrews and that at leastwise in an obscure sense the Sin arisen from thence was insinuated Also illegitimate Persons were in times past driven from the Temple and Heaven and those who should be born of an adulterous Conception because they did wholly shew forth an Adamical Generation but those who were born of a lawfull 〈…〉 Bed were as yet Impure until that the fore-skin being taken away they might seem to renounce the Concupiscence of the Flesh And in this respect they represented in a shadow also those that were to be renewed from far by the Spirit of God and the laver of Regeneration Moreover the very Word of Truth doth profesly confirm the Position 1 John 3. Except any one be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God B. Except any one be born again of Water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God C. That which is born of the Flesh is Flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit D. The Spirit breatheth where it listeth Thou hearest the Voice thereof but knowest not from whence it may come or whither it may go E. So is every Man who is born of the Spirit F. If I shall speak unto you of Earthly Things and ye believe not how shall ye believe if I tell you of Heavenly things G. None hath ascended into Heaven but he who descended from Heaven H. And as Moyses exalted the Serpent in the Wilderness So it behoves the Son of Man to be exaltâ—d Christ Jesus descending from Heaven took not on him the Flesh of Sin by Adamical Generation or by the will of Man but he receiving the form of a Servant was made into the Likeness of the Sons of Adam being found in Habit as a Man Yet being Adamical was a true Man such as Adam was being newly created But he being made into the similitude of an Adamical Man emptied or humbled himself taking on him the form of a Servant But he was not made a Servant or Impure But in this glad tydings he denieth the Vision of God or the sight of the Kingdom of God and in b. an entrance into the Kingdom of God For not that the Glory which makes blessed may be seen without entring into Heaven or the same thing is twice spoken in vain or that a. doth require another new birth than b. but a. contains a denyal of participating of the Heavens for the Souls of the Dead before the Resurrection
manifest how most nearly a single Life doth come unto the Primitive state of Innocency and so that also from thence we may learn that the intention of the Creator was in a single Life For now and then that word of Truth comes into my mind which requireth the state of little Children in those that are to be saved under the penalty of infernal punishment and that we must despair of Salvation unless we are made or become like unto them In whom notwithstanding I find a suddain speedy undiscreet and frequent anger stripes kickings lyes disobediences murmurings reproaches a ready deceit and lying in play an unsatiable Throat impudence disturbances disdaines unconstancy and a stupid innocency lastly no acts of devotion attention or contribution But yet those are not the things in little ones which are required for those that are to be saved under pain of an Eternal loss In the next place neither do little Children want their pride of Life and despising of others and especially their hatred of the poor also a frequent desire of revenge cruelty an itch of getting or attaining the concupiscence of the Eyes and are wholly and perpetually addicted to and drowned in self-love But neither are those the things required in them that are to besaved under Gods indignation But they want the concupiscence of the Flesh alone This indeed is the Mark which with so loud sounds it required for those that are to be saved Because it is that which was of a primitive intention in Creation And therefore from an opposite sense I argue That the chief fault of the Fall of the Apple being eaten was convenant about the infringement of that chast bashfulness that is that Original sin was scituated in the breaking of Virginity in the act of Concupiscence and propagation of feed But not in the very act of disobedience and despised Admonition and distrust of the truth of the divine Word For B. Hildegard also in the Third Book of her Life seemeth to have testified the same thing The Author saith She freed the Matron Sibylla of the City of Lausaâ—ium beyond the Alpes who required her help by a Messenger from a daily Issue of Blood by the subscribed Letters being sent unto her Thou shalt put these words between thy Breast and 〈◊〉 in the 〈◊〉 of him who rightly disposeth all things In the Blood of Adam arose Death In the Blooâ— of Christ Death is extinguished In the same Blood of Christ I command thee Oh Blood that thou contain or stop thy Flux And the Matron was cured by these written Words the which others have many times experienced Therefore Death was extinguished by the effusion of the Blood of Christ and the particiâ—â—â—â—on thereof in being born again that is by the offering up of Chastity to God the Father for those that are to be renewed in his Blood And moreover if we do well mind it is acknowledged that God hath loved women before Men in their Sex by reason of an inbred bashfulness Unto which Sex therefore he hath freely given Devotion as a gift of Nature whereby â—ere should be some kind of natural faculty and virtue proper to that Sex a Medium unto Salvation For the first Apostoless before the coming of the Comforter by one onely Sermon converted Samaria the head of the Israelitish Kingdom otherwise most stubborn Only the Women from Galilee being constantly although disgracefully serviceable adered to Christ at his Death and under all ignomiâ—â—y he being left by his disciples the witesses of so many Miracles and that at the first blast of adversity For the poor Women rejoyced in their reproaches so they might but follow Christ carrying his Cross upon his back Magdalen also first preached the Gospel of his Resurrection unto her own who did not believe and confirmed them in Faith who doubted and deserved to be the first beholder of Christ after his Death because she sought the same with the fervor of the greatest Devotion God I say hath heaped very many Diseases Adversities and Subjections on this Sex that it should be by so much the more like and nearer to his Son But the World despiseth Women and preferreth Men But in most things the Judgements of God are opposite unto the Judgements of the World so that also the World despiseth the Poor of whom Christ calleth himself the Father but not of the Rich. Then in the next place Christ calls himself in many places The Son of Man But seeing he had not a Man unto his Father therefore by an Antonomâ—sia he calls the Woman the Virgin Man by an absolute dignity of Name and worthy of or beseeming the Femal Sex as if for that reason the name Man ought thenceforth after sin to be proportioned and stands for the Woman in the more famous signification Shewing at leastwise that in thing the Mother-Virgin was after the sin of Adam the one onely Man such as the Divinity had espoused unto it self in the Creation of the Universe for the replenishing of the places laid waste by the Evil Spirit And that what Eve ceased to be through an infringing of Chastity that Mary the most glorious Virgin was to wit The one only Mother of those that are to be saved in the Regeneration of Purity But neither 〈◊〉 I undertaken a laudatory Oration in behalf of that Sex Only it is sufficient to have shewn that God hath loved the Femal Sex by reason of its love of Chastity For a Virgin thinâ—â— on the things of her God The Apostle also Commands Widows which are truly Widows to be honoured And in the old Law those were reckoned impure as many as even conjugally had known their Wives if they were not seriously washed and were to be driven from the Temple unless they were first duly rinsed He also violently fell by a sudden Death because such an impure Man although from a good zeal put his hand to the tottering Cart wherein the Ark of the Covenant the Image of the God-bearing-Virgin was carried Indeed on both sides the Truth being agreeable to it self doth detest and attest the filthyness of impure Adamical generation For the Impurity which had conceived a contagion from any natural Issue whatsoever of Menstrues or Seed and that by its touching alone is reckoned to be equal to that which should by degrees creep on a person from a co-touching of dead Carcasses and to be expiated by the same ceremonious right That the Text might agreeably denote that Death began from the Concupiscence of the Flesh lying hid in the fruit of the Apple Therefore also the one only healing Medicine of so great an impurity contracted by touching consisted in washing under the likeness whereof Faith and Hope which in Baptisme were poured into us are strengthened For as soon as Adam had known by Fratricide that the first-born of Mortals whom he had begotten in the Concupiscence of the Flesh had slain his guiltless and righteous Brother and fore-seeing the wicked Errors of
Mortals that would come from thence he then also well perceiving his own Miseries in himself certainly knowing that all these Calamities had happened unto him from the Concupiscence of the Flesh drawn from the Apple which were unavoidably issuing on his Posterity he thought it a discreet thing for him for hereafter wholly to abstain from his Wife which he had violated and therefore mourned in Câ—â—stity and Sorrow a hundred full Years Foolishly hoping that by the proper merit of that Abstinence as by an opposite to the Concupiscence of the 〈◊〉 that he should again return into his former Majesty of Purity But the Repentance 〈…〉 Age being finished probably the Mystery of the Lords Incarnation was revealed unto him Neither that Man ever could hope to return unto the brightness of his antient purity by his own strength and much less that himself could restore his Posterity from Death And therefore that Matrimony or Marriage was well pleasing and was presently after the Fall indulged unto him by God to wit because he had determined thus to satisfie his Justice at the fulness of times which should to the glory of his own Name and the confusion of Satan carry up Mankind unto a more eminent blessedness From that time therefore Adam began to know his Wife and to fill the earth by multiplying according to the Blessing once given him and a Law enjoyned him Yet so nevertheless that although Matrimony by reason of the great want of Propagation and otherwise an impossible coursary succession of the primitive Divine Generation be admitted as a Sacrament of the faithful Yet because at length it seemed by reason of necessity as it were by dissembling or connivance to be indulged Therefore the Comforter dictating it it was determined against the Greeks by the Church that the Priest by whose workmanship the Lords Body is incarnated in the Sacrifice ought to be altogether estranged from the act whereby Death and the impurity of Nature were introduced For the necessity of propagation hath indeed thus in times past excused the offence of a coursary succession in Generating For as Augustine witnesseth If the propagation of Men could have been made after any other manner the Conjugal Act had been unlawful Wherefore Bigamy or a Duplicity of Wives is not undeservedly expelled from the Bishoprick even as actual Wedlock from the Sub-deaconship For however it be a Sacrament yet it is unbeseeming the Sacrament of the Altar to wit by which the chastity of the first constitution and intention of the Creator are recompensed For God despised that blood should be offered unto him even in burnt-offerings and that Man should eat blood being mindful that the blood in which the sensitive Soul is had proceeded from the eating of the Apple But besides bruit Beasts are indeed afraid are angry do flatter do mourn do condole do lay in wait and those Passions Man from the sensitive Soul possesseth common with Bruits Yea also it shameth Elephants if they are upbraided with any thing that hath the less generously been done by them But no Animal or sensitive Creature perceiveth shame from a sexual copulation From hence its manifest that Concupiscence of the flesh is Diabolical onely to Man which in Bruits is Earthly and Natural If therefore both our Parents presently after the eating of the Apple were ashamed if they therefore covered onely their privy parts therefore that shame doth presuppose and accuse of something committed against Justice against the intent of the Creator and against their own proper Nature By consequence that Adamical generation was not of the primitive constitution of their nature as neither of the original intent of the Creator Therefore when God foretels that the earth shall bring forth Thistles and Thornes and that Man in the sweat of his Face shall eat his Bread even as was already proved above they were not Execrations but Admonitions that those sort of things should be obvious in the Earth and because Beasts should bring forth in pain should plow in sweat should eat their food with labour and fear that the Earth also should bring forth very many things besides the intent of the Husband-man therefore also that they ought to be nourished like unto Bruit-beasts who had begun to generate after the manner of Bruit-beasts And then if the Text be more fully considered it is told unto Eve after Transgression that she should bring forth her off-springs in pain For it undoubtedly followes from thence that before sin she had brought forth without pain that is as she had conceived her Womb being shut so also she had brought forth Therefore what hath the pain of bringing forth common with the eating of the Apple unless the Apple had operated about the conception or concupiscence of the flesh And by consequence unless the Apple had stirred up copulation and the Creator had intended to disswade it by dehorting from eating of the Apple For why are the genital members of the Woman punished with paines of Child-birth if the Eye in seeing the Apple the Hands in cropping it and the mouth in eating it have offended For was it not sufficient to have chastised the Life with Death and the Health with very many Diseases Moreover why is the Womb which in eating is guiltless afflicted after the manner of Bruits with the pain of bringing forth if the conception granted to Beasts were not forbidden to Man After the Fall therefore their eyes were opened and they were ashamed It denoteth that from the filthiness of Concupiscence they knew that the copulation of the flesh was forbidden them in the most innocent chastity of Nature and that they were over-spread with shame when their eyes being opened their understandings saw the committed filthyness But on the Serpent and evil Spirit alone was the top of the whole curse even as the priviledge of the Woman and the mysterious prerogative of the blessing upon the Earth To wit that the Woman but not the Man although he was now constituted for the head of the Woman should at some time bruise the head of the Serpent And so that it is not possible that to bring forth in pain should be a Curse for truly with the same mouth of the Lord is pronounced the Blessing of the Woman and Victory over the infernal Spirit And moreover to be subject to the Man was not enjoyned unto the Woman in stead of an Execution But it denoted in the mind of God humility chosen in a new Law and another method of living appointed anew by the Son of Man For the Son of Man humbled himself even unto death also to be extinguished by a reproachful death he called it to be exalted Therefore while the Lord depresseth the Woman under the power of the Man he exalted the same Woman in his presence and made her the more like unto himself After another manner because the Serpent should for the future creep upon the Earth The name of Serpent proveth that that was not
Marriage-bed was Barren But therefore the extension of the Womb ought to be suitable to the Seed by reason of avoiding a Vacuun And then every strange thing is a hostile impediment to Generation Then in the next place after that the Seed of the Man is joyned with that of the Woman the sucking of that Load-stone in the aforesaid hollowness of the Womb presently ceaseth and the Door of the Womb is shut nigh its Neck But the Womb doth by shutting out all Air on every side and equally embrace its Content with a bountiful Favour and a more exact co-mixture of them both beginneth by reason of an occult co-marriage unfolded in the Seeds on both sides Presently after although the conceived Seed be at the first disturbed and a thick or dark Liquor yet two dayes after it assumeth the likeness of the transparent white of an Egge But on the Sixth day but not before the Archeus the Inhabitant of the Seeds appeared unto me as it were a cloudy Vapour the which on the thirteenth day after was shadowily endowed with the Figure of a Man together with a certain clarifying of its own thickness For then the Seed had increased perhaps in the tenth part of it self and had married the nourishable Liquor unto it self being the original or first-born Liquor In the mean time I wondered at the begun Self-love of Selfishness which even in Seeds should presently begin to meditate of their Increase For as lukewarm Milk doth presently incrust it self in a thin Skin so also the Seed straightway after three dayes arms it self with a Skin the which notwithstanding becomes more manifest by Degrees Yet both the Garments do differ in that that the Milk over-spreds its Skin only against the Air but the Seed on every side because the thin Skin is not extended over the Milk by a Spirit the Former or Framer thereof but by Heat which separateth the Diversities of the Milk For from hence it comes to pass that the more slymie and more Fat and more Neighbourly parts of the Milk are alwayes designed for the making of a skin by a separation from the rest and the which being consumed the skinnifying of the Milk ceaseth In Milk therefore that tendeth to Corruption unlikenesses of matter are made The which doth not happen in Seeds collected and disposed to Generation Furthermore although the Air was seen under the Figure of a Man Yet a sexual Character could not as yet be noted by me after some dayes from the Vision I lighted on that place of the Apostle There shall not be Greek or Hebrew not Male or Female but they are all one in Christ About the 17th day I saw that this figured Air did sink and plainly espouse it self within the White and did as it were sleep for full three Days space and about 12 hours and was again a certain dark Chaos in the Seed In which interval it covered it self with a visible Secundine and the hardness of a Membrane which it found not in the Matter it had made unto it self by a formative and transchangative Faculty Indeed this forming Air while it engraveth the Body it useth not separation neither therefore hath it need of a diversity of matter whereby it may frame or fashion the Diversities of Alterations of Organs proposed unto it self in the Figure Which three dayes being finished that Spirit the Framer then first appeared being markable with the Signature of the Sexes yet no longer undistinctly walking up and down throughout the whole Lump of the Seed but under a certain confusion proper unto that three dayes space all that very Air had grown together in every of his Parts although they not yet appearing For neither was there as yet so much another wandring and floating Spirit in that Mass but one only implanted Spirit continual unto it self through the Rudiments of the Parts did finish the whole distributive Divisions of Generation and that its own Pains was uncessant yet without toyle and grief or wearisomness And although it was not wearied in its Work yet it required a Vicar for it self for a distinction of the Parts is more and more unfolded and there is made a growth or increasing of the whole Lump by the Mothers and that more pure Blood and it forms unto it self a Radical Moisture the constituter of the solid Parts Wherefore also it draws an Increase and Fewel to it self from the vital Spirit of the Mothers arterial Blood the which to wit it soon assimilates unto if self by a most perfect Union Indeed the Spirit is nourished and increaseth in the delineation of the Seed no otherwise than as the corporeal Lump of the Embryo it self Yet the inflowing Spirit was not seen by me before the thirty second day after Conception It was then indeed as yet thin and drawn from the arterial Blood of the Mother being translated into a neighbouring Species But this Spirit about the one and fourtieth day had obtained a certain vital Light or Splendour and also it expressed the stature of a Man but heaped round together yet deformed by reason of a disproportionated bigness of the Head which Light was as it were a shining or brightness from a flame which Aqua Vitae sheweth in burning And not much after some moments of time this Light was on a sudden made more Lightsome than it self The sensitive Soul although it make a Species in Bruits and therefore subsisteth by it self yet in Man it contains not a Species but only a subordinate Diversity of Light or a Degree unto the Mind therefore scarce subsisting without the Mind And although in Man there be a sensitive Life yet it is not a specifical Being by Creation but a seminal Being occasioned through the Lust of our first Parent the Character whereof is wholly restrained by the Mind The sensitive Life therefore doth presently inform the Spirit of the Seed under a skie-coloured and obscure Splendour and is also informed by the Mind and that with a clearer Light Yet 4 5 6 or 7 Points of the Cord of a Foot-length do interpose because Seeds do differ in the Perfection of Dispositions and therefore the Spirits the Formers of Seeds do differ in their Perfection and chearfulness of Acting For from hence it is that that which happens unto one Conception in one forty Dayes that happens to another in the second forty or in the third neither yet therefore are the more slow or sluggish Quicknings more imperfect than swift ones no otherwise than as fore-ripe Wits are oft-times to be set behind or less esteemed than the more slow ones At leastwise the whole race of our Generation breaths forth some famous thing For although the Archeus the forming Work-man containeth in it a humane Figure and figureth the Body after its own likeness yet the Fabrick of Man is not from the Begining in an erected or upright Stature as neither confusedly rouled into a circle but bent or hooked after which manner the Young is defective
constrained to acknowledge with us that there is a Magnetism that is a certain hidden Property with this appellation by reason of the manifest Prerogative of that Stone divided or distinguished from other abstruse and commonly unknown Qualities A Load-stone being laid upon a thin trencher of Wood and swimming on the Water is forthwith on one and that a certain side turning towards the South but on the other side toward the North The Austral or Southern Part thereof if it shall touch Iron it turns that towards the North and the northern Part of the Load-stone having touched Iron will incline it to the South By its Sepentrional or northerly Part that is its Belly it allures Iron or Steel to it and by its Austral Part or Back it drives that Iron or Steel before it The Northern side by rubbing of the Point of a Compass-Needle from the right Hand to the left will direct the same to the South but if the rubbing be made from the left Hand unto the right the direction of the Point will be contrary In like manner also the South side of the Load-stone is varied Yea which is more if a Load-stone by its rubbing on a piece of Iron doth make it to be Magnetical that is an attractive of other Iron let the same Iron which is now Magnetical be rubbed again being turned upwards and downwards upon the Load-stone it will presently put off its attractive Power Of which Effects if they relish thee enquire thou of William Guilbert a Physitian of London in his Treatise of the Load-stone than whom none ever wrote better concerning this Subject and by whose Industry the variation of the Compass may be restored The Needle which now bends to the North under the Aequinoctial Line staggers to and fro but beyond it bends it self unto the other Pole I shall add this medicinal Faculty of it The back of the Load-stone as it repulseth Iron so also it drives back the Gut cures Burstness and every Catarrh or Rheum which is of the Nature of Iron for all Magnetisms are ordained for the use of Man The Iron-attracting Faculty if it shall be married to the Mummy of a Woman then the back of the Load-stone being emplaistred within her Thigh and the Belly thereof on her Loyns doth safely prevent a Miscarrying already threatned but the Belly of the Load-stone being applyed within her Thigh and its Back to her Loyns doth wonderfully facilitate or dispatch her delivery All which Effects of the Load-stone our Anatomist shall illustrate by Reasons drawn from foregoing Causes and explain to us the manner thereof as made known unto him Or I shall by a like Argument of Ignorance conclude that these likewise are the Delusions of Satan and not natural Effects I will now produce some Examples of a co-like Magnetism that we at length may come with the more seasoned Judgment unto the positive Reason and refuting of all Oppositions What can I do more the Reasons which thou hast not brought in thy own behalf I my self will devise Every Effect thou wilt say proceeds either immediately from God the Work-man and so is a Miracle or from Satan and so is Monstrous or from natural and ordinary Causes and then is natural but Magnetisme is not a Miracle neither is it a natural Effect therefore Satanical I answer Although I am able to shew this aforesaid rehearsal to be insufficient in regard the inward Man acteth even after none of the fore-mentioned wayes the which hereafter we are plainly enough to declare nevertheless we now with a dry Foot pass over the Assumption as being about to deny the Subsumption or Inference to wit in that part wherein it is affirmed that the effect is not natural For that was first to be proved least a begging of the Principle or Question should be committed but herein our Censurer hath and will be defective to say that it is not a natural Effect unless he thought that for him to say it was all one as to prove it and to have placed his own Authority in the room of Reason For there are many Effects natural which do not ordinarily happen to wit those which are the more seldom incident Therefore in favour of our Anatomist I shall every where not only defend the affirmative part but also I will declare it by Reasons and confirm it by Examples For so the Argument now alleaged shall violently fall with its own weight There is a Book imprinted at Frankford in the year 1611 by Uldericus Balk a Dominican concerning the Lampe of Life where thou shalt find out of Paracelsus the true magnetical Cure of many Diseases namely of the Dropsie Gowt Jaundise c. by enclosing the warm Blood of the Sick in the shell and white of an Egg which is exposed to a nourishing Warmth and this Blood being admixed with a piece of Flesh thou shalt give unto a hungry Dog or Swine and the grief is presently drawn and departs from thee into the Dog no otherwise than as the Leprosie of Naaman passed over or was transplanted into Gehazi through the Execration of the Prophet What wilt thou account this also to be diabolical to have thus restored the sick Party by the Magnetisms of the Mumial Blood alone But yet he is wholly and undoubtedly restored A Woman weaning her Infant whereby her Breasts may the sooner grow barren Milks out her Milk on hot burning Coals and her Dugs soon grow Flaggy Doth haply the Devil suck them If any one shall Foul at thy Door and thou intendest to prevent that Beastliness for the future lay thou a red hot Iron upon the new laid Excrement and by Magnetism the voyder of that Ordure shall soon grow Scabby on his Buttocks to wit the Fire roasting the Excrement and as it were by a Dorsal or rebounding Magnetism driving the sharpness of the Roast into his impudent Fundament Perchance thou wilt say that this is Satanical because the end is a hurting of the Party But surely the abuse of Powers is in the liberty of Man Yet it is not the less natural in its use Make a small Table of the lightest whitest and bafest kinde of Lead and at the one end hereof put a piece of Amber and three spans off place a piece of green Vitriol this Vitriol will forthwith visibly loose its Colour and Tartness Both which Effects are found in the Preparation of Amber At least-wise this very Experiment shall be free from all Illusion of Satan A certain Inhabitant of Bruxels lost his Nose in fight he comes to Tagliacozzus a Chyrurgion living at Bononia in expectation of another Nose and when as he feared the Incision of his own Arm he hired a Porter for his end out of whose Arm he having given him his Price the Chyrurgion at length digged a Nose About thirteen Months after his return into his own Country presently on a sudden the ingrafted Nose grew cold and after some dayes fell off through Putrefaction By
children houses and Altars and the pleasant fields of their Countrey for the worship of Religion Many also are poor of their own accord because no body will give them any thing neither are those wanting who feign their Religions change their garment walk in wodden begging shooes they by a lurking hypocrisie counterseit an Hermite into whom God hath inspired the vertues of Simples There are some also who everywhere intermix Astronomy and Palmestry In the next place there are others who wander about the countrey who received their Art in the Mountain of Venus from hence they have known to cure bruit beasts no less than men from diseases Likewise they know also how to foretell things to come and to dig treasures out of the earth And there are some who being destitute of books write on paper the unharmless words of Solomon whereby diseases no otherwise than as Devils are chased away they carry crosses before and behind them lest the Devil should carry away him that writes those powerful words There are some who understand divers Dialects they feign among the Dutch that they can speak the Chaldean Arabick and Dalmatian or Sclavonian tongue and being laden with many Arts they at length brag of Science Mathematical or Histories Many of these have known how to make no less then the stone which makes gold they carry about with them Mines of Mettals that are propagable by a perpetual ferment There are also Saracens and there are baptized Jews for the most part wickeder than those that are not baptized who have learned out of the Cabal divers wayes to morrifie Mercury and likewise diversly to prepare poysons the which they deliver to be prevalent against all diseases and many other They boast that the Hebrew tongue doth contain the foundations of all Sciences and the great Secrets of Common-wealths and that they are great with child of the fore-knowledge of future things They oftentimes cite their Rabbins their book Nebolohu together with the little Key of Solomon from whence they are able to read as well things past as things to come Others also affirm that the medicinal Art is to be inherited only in their own progeny or succession of blood although they are all foolish or wicked persons But if they are not received by men at leastwise among women they boast with a Grace for they are covered with the same hide both Greeks and Jewes although the one doth interchangeably deride the other for they being prompt by nature perfectly learn to Lie of themselves There is also a fugitive sort of the family of Chymists the which while they boast of the more choice remedies set to sale nothing but poysons to Apothecaries for they usurp all liberty of lying among the ignorant lying increasing with them through daily use For they are Idiots being fugitive Apostates from Chymical furnaces But the Schools do with a greater security and by a most free authority of all deceive Mortals for when as I do by the unavoidable decree of truth demonstrate that they are altogether ignorant of the essences causes and remedies of Diseases and do confirm that thing by a great Volumn and Reasons drawn from the cause they in the mean time promote their own Schollars this man because he is a Latinist and hath his father a Chyrurgion or an Apothecary or another because he was made Master of Arts and hath heard some Lectures of Professours another lastly because he in part brags of Enclide or or hath learned to dispute from Aristotle But I pity mankind which is subject to so many inward Calamities and exposed to so many external assailants who when under the unlucky rules of the Schools they have slain any one of those in chief Place do assume the priviledge of calling upon the uncurableness of the disease and have everywhere their patrons and complices And so they alone do without punishment make an assault on the lives of Princes even as I have shewed in the book of Fevers But by so much themore miserably do mortals entrust themselves in their hands because they cover their ignorance among the common people by promotion and an oath For they swear that they will faithfully cure infirmities the which I have shewn that they are altogether ignorant of Yea their Prince Galen hath not shewn them so much as one Medicine which was not borrowed from Empericks however he may triumph in his pastime Theory of Complexions and Degrees as well according to their kinds as places For Quintius the Master of Galen and wholly an Emperick is everywhere called on for help by his Schollar Princes and Magistrates ought to divert this unpunished liberty of killing from their Subjects and they are held from Conscience so to do But I do not think that this hath been neglected through carelesness but that it hath hitherto been dis-regarded by reason of the ignorance of the remedy But I judge this to be the remedy thereof If they appoint every Physician to be so obliged as that he ought to go to see every sick person by whom he shall be required three times at least under the penalty of banishment and deprivement of his office For otherwise the number of Physitians hath sufficiently increased And then that there be no pay due to a Physitian if he shall not heal the sick By this double decree indeed Physitians would become the more watchful and the business would more rightly succeed with the sick and the Prince would preserve his Subjects But those Statutes are to be seriously kept for they are equivalent to the Law of Cornelius concerning privy murderers I now return from whence I have digressed There are also some who while they feign themselves to have read my Book of Fevers object that I boast only of Chymical Remedies and unwonted Arcanum's or Secrets that I might call every sick person unto my self by despising the most safe doctrine of the Antients Far be it Because I neither go to visit the sick not do I heal for hope of gain The which all good men of our whole Countrey are witnesses of Surely I call none to prostitute or set my Medicines to sale unto them I willingly live a retired life being sought unto only by the poor This one thing I openly and freely profess to wit that the conquests of difficult diseases do require other Physitians than Humourists and far different remedies from those which the Apothecary sels Because they do most desirously require the endowed powers of the most perfect bodies that their poysons from their balsames may be separated in us Yea where poysons are not manifest the confusions of the Archeus are overcome impurities are privily expelled the Dimensions of remedies are turned in and out that they may disclose their properties of whose endeavour the Archeus hath need And moreover the impressions of remedies may be turned inward whose Tyranny our nature cannot bear without destruction For in this offence and in this penury many ages have
which prostrate the most potent or chief Dignities of the mind yet the Sense and Motion being unhurt But after that the understanding returns indeed as well Sense as Motion are abolished Some things also being outwardly anoynted on the Body do take away the feeling so as that there is a liberty for the Chyrurgion in cutting and the Oyntments being afterwards withdrawn the expelled feeling returneth From hence indeed I have believed that the Apoplexy drowsie Evils Falling-sicknesse and likewise stranglings of the Womb and any Swoonings are Diseases arising from a secondary passion and action of Government but not from a corporall confluence of humouts and vapours bred in the bottles of the Brain Truly the Womb never ascends above the Diaphragma but it causeth Apoplectical Affects There is not therefore a material Touching of the Womb and Head For I have known a Perfume whereby a Woman suddenly falls down as Apoplectical together with the Palsie of her side and she remaines such unlesse she be restored by the Fume of a Horse-fig sent thorow by a Funnel to the Womb. For I have seen also the Circle of the neck in a Woman to have suddenly ascended above the height of her Chin the which is subject neither to humours nor vapours For truly there is an aspect of the Womb as it were of its own Basilisk whereby the parts by the afflux of the Latex but what that Latex is shall be taught elsewhere do swell even as is otherwise proper to many poysons Even so as the waters do ascend and swell at both stations of the Moon from the aspect of that Star alone I will decipher my own self in this respect While I was in the 65 Year of my age and was greatly occupied about the consideration of the Apoplexy I discerned To wit that a positive one which should be made by a freezing poyson had it self in such a manner as that it could be known from another which afflicts by the stopping of a sinew Even so that he who sitting with his Leg Retorted or writhen back loseth feeling in that Leg by reason of a pressing together of the sinew and while as Sense is restored unto it that Lancings or prickings are felt from the vital or animal Spirit which is Salt as I have shewn in the Book of long Life but from an astonishment which proceeds from a freezing poyson if the feeling shall return no pain of lancing or pricking offers it self For I contemplated in my study under the cold of the Calends of the 11th Month called January and an earthen Pan laden with a few live Coals stood aloof off whereby the most chilly cold season of the Winter might at least be a little mitigated One of my Daughters seasonably coming to the place sented the stink of the smoak and presently withdrew the Pan But I forthwith perceived a fainting to be sorely threatned about the Orifice of my stomach I arising therefore and going forth in one instant I fell with a straight body on a stony ground therefore as well by reason of the swooning as of the stroak of the hinder part of my head I was brought away for a dead carcase I returned indeed after a quarter of an houre unto the signes of life but together with a swelling of the hinder part of my head I felt the seames or futures of my scul notably to paine me and that more and more My tast also and smelling to have been wholly taken away and my eares continually to tingle Moreover at every of my conceptions my head presently whirled round with a giddinesse even my eyes being shut straightway after all my sinewes even unto the calfes of my legs ached so as that one only sneezing cruelly launced the whole body indeed an appetite of eating returned but a whirling round excercised me for some months But I learned first that in the evening before supper the giddinesse of my head increased to wit about the bound of digestion 2. That my judgment remayning the giddinesse notwithstanding was prevalent 3. That from any kind of pot-herbs and unsalted fishes the whirling did the more cruelly assault me 4. I noted the Gem Turcois to have remayned entire or neutral with me having fallen nor to have preserved me from the peril of falling And that the Turcois doth not help any but those whom a sudden fear in falling surpriseth The which happens not in those wherein a swooning precedes and frameth the fall 5. That my giddinesse was from meates subject to corruption 6. And I seriously noted that the Apoplexy Vertigo c. do depend on the midriffe although from the shaking of the stroake my head alone seemed to be affected and the vertigo did sensibly whirle about in my head Yet seeing the giddinesse had respect unto meates and a plenty of meates I remarkeably perceived that presently after the aforsaid swooning a guest besides nature remayned about the stomach being the occasional cause of the aforesaid giddinesse or vertigo and that thing I the more strongly confirmed because as oft as I had in times past sayled over the sea I indeed at the beginning of stormes grew nauseous but I never vomited or desisted from eating but after that I wandred about on Land I always perceived an unconstant giddinesse night and day resembling the motion of sayling upwards and downwards Untill that I was alwayes at length freed by a vomite of white Vitriol For at least wise in sayling there was no offence brought unto my head yet as if I had been drunk I threatned a fall with a continuall giddinesse the operation of my judgment notwithstanding remayning constant and unhurt But I was always freed from that giddinesse by one onely vomite But now in the aforesaid fall the stroake indeed produced a tumour in the hinder part of my head and in the seames of my scull bewraying its effects in the organs of the senses and nerves But all these did least of all cause a wheeling about of my head the which I observed to be chiefely stirred up or exasperated from the choice of meates Most especially because that whirling was restrained according to its custome by one only vomite From whence I experienced in my self that the giddinesse of my head although my head was hurt was stirred up and nourished by the stomach and so from the Duumvirate But that the swooning it self gave a cause of the stroak and also left a sealing mark in a forreigne guest there detained Again that that whirling was not from a vapour lifted upwards from beneath but from the corporeal occasion of a sealed excrement as oft as something offered it self which was the lesse pleasing unto those inferiour shops the force and impressive Idea of the same redounded into the braine From thence therefore I discerned that be-drunkening things being derived from the stomach into the arteries and co-mixed with vital spirit did confound the family-administration of the spirit in the little cells of the Braine and
of all the prickings of the Sinewes or Tendons and likewise Fevers Laxative poysons being taken the stroaks or stings of Serpents and other things like unto these do manifest Neither in the mean time doth it argue on the contrary that a stroak of the Head doth also bring on a Convulsion since there is no lesse Athourity to the Head than to the Intestine in Torments for the framing of a Convulsion Indeed as well a Convulsion arising from the head as that which is bred from the sensitive Soul much abhorring poyson belongs to the muscles its Clients In a stroak of the Head what hath presently defiled the contracted side with a poyson Or what hath straightway emptied or filled all the sinewes of that side Doth not the Brain shake in sneezing Is not the membrane which compasseth the Lungs drawn together in a dry Asthma Is not the Pleura or Skin girding the Ribs co-wrinkled and contracted in a Pleurisie and doth it not for this cause voluntarily pull it self away from the Ribs And is not the Mediastinum or membrane of the middle Belly not unfrequently contracted Also the Diaphragma or Midriffmuscle through a notable anguish of pressure straightned whereunto a Name is hitherto wanting although that affect be frequent in the beating of the Heart The sometimes dull paines of the Spleen also are the Betokeners of that Bowel its being convulsed The stomach also is drawn together in the Hicket vomiting and stomach paines Indeed Contractures are renewed in these membranes as oft as the molesting occasional Cause is stirred or returneth Also in the beginning of a Dropsie or Jaundice yea even before water or wind be bred the Abdomen is oft-times drawn together and waxeth hard on one side Lastly The Bowels shew forth intermitting gripes not onely through an extension of winds which brings forth no paines if the Belly be not stopped but rather through a Convulsion of themselves The which I have elsewhere written that I have contemplated of beyond the Navil of an Infant For I beheld that as often as wringings or gripings of the Guts were exceeding urgent fits of the Falling-sicknesse were stirred up but the Intestines according to the measure of pain were as it were by walking or moving hither and thither diversly rouled together and contracted otherwise the Intestines being appeased and plainly at rest For a sharp and brackish Excrement in Colicks pricks the sensitive Soul and this produceth pain and as it were by intervals drawes the Bowel together and the wind being then shut up therein by the chance of Fortune stretcheth out the Bowels Therefore the Wind-Colick so called in distinction from Duelech descending hath not its name from the Cause but from a latter and accidental Symptome So likewise from Laxatives the pain of gripes or wringings of the Bowels doth oft-times return with a Convulsion and it is cured by things mitigating the Convulsion For Wind-Colicks are scarce discerned from the Stone-Colick because the same Symptome of pain through a crisping and contracting of the Bowels appeares alike in both For so the Oyl of Almonds being drunk asswageth paines because it pacifieth the contracted Intestines by besmearing them Therefore seeing pain produceth a Convulsion and this likewise a new pain we see that pain doth oft-times beget pain and that which is like it self And then as oft as an injury happens to the skin veines arteries or nerves they contract themselves into wrinckles through the power of the sensitive Soul For how notably hard doth an Artery presently become under any pain The hardness whereof doth not argue the dryness of an Artery as the Schooles judge but a singular extension or convulsion thereof and the which therefore Sweat being at hand doth again produce a re-loosening of the Contraction together with a softness Otherwise there is as equal a possibility of re-moistening a dryed and hardened Artery as there is hope of taking away old age Hath not also a contracted Bladder oft-times deceived expert Cutters for the Stone So the Kernels that are the vessels of the Seed are drawâ— together in the Gonorrhea or Running of the Reines they being stirred up by a spur of the Seed The privy part also being drawn together inwards doth now and then so vanish out of sight that nothing stands out beside the Nut of the Yard So also the muscles have their own Cramps And so a Travelling Woman suffers by intervals her own and cruel Contractures as oft as the Womb co-wrinkles it self behind that it may expel the lurking Fardle The bone of the Groyn also unto the share doth by a voluntary contracture of it self open a passage for the coming Young with cruel pain I have seen also in Women suffering a strangling of the Womb the Tendons in the native place of a Ligament voluntarily to have burst asunder and to have been contracted with cruel pain and likewise to have returned to their former place and the which when they had the oftner suffered that thing I have noted them to have complained of the more mild pain do happily the Schooles in that leaping and wandâ—ing digression of the sinewes acknowledge a sudden emptying filling or entertainment of a poysonous quality and the sudden banishments of these It is also familiar to the stone of the Kidneys for the Urine-pipes to be drawn together with most cruel pain nothing peradventure being urgent beside the more tenâ—eâ—sand I have alwayes judged it the part of bold ignorance that winds according to the Schooles should arise in the Sinews and Tendons or be conceived in the sinewes from without as the authors of a Cramp for for that cause a flatulent one yea and to be taken away from thence almost at pleasure For the sensitive Spirit abhorring pain furiously contracteth the Veines Arteries Tendons and Membranes And while as under such Furies it finds not its hoped for succour it stirs up an increase thereof For so a Thorn being thrust into the finger as it causeth pain it crispeth and hardens the Artery and it hardens the pulse thereof which before was not there easily to be discerned by reason of an extension onely of the contracted Artery For it is the property of pain to pull together and to contract so indeed that the bone above the share and in the loyns is voluntarily contracted in a Travelling Woman although no Muscle being the Guider or mover For why pain is in its own nature a contractive of the members and that by a natural motion and in no wise an arbitral or voluntary one the which is especially seen in the lips of Wounds Because they are those which are without pain as long as they have their lips flaggy and not contracted But the Schooles have passed by the contractures of pain in Nature as also the sensitive Soul by running over unto winds to the falling down of excrementitious humours unto their sharpness unto the agreement and secondary passion of parts the which notwithstanding are altogether divers from
able to proceed and whether they hope that bloud being at sometime after what manner soever once putrified in the veines there is aforded in Nature a going back or return To wit from such a privation For let them shew that it is not a contradiction that it is proper to a Fever to defile the bloud it self and for this property to be taken away by the effect to wit by a removal of that which is putrified For if the more impure bloud be at first drawn out of the vein and they repeatingly open a vein in the mean time they prostrate and disturb the Faculties hence also they take away the hope of a Crisis what if then the more red bloud shall flow forth Surely they cry out as if the whole Troop of the Malady were taken away at the first turn and as if the Seat of Fevers had been extended onely from the Heart unto the Elbow but that the good bloud resided about the Liver But I have alwayes discerned evacuations of the last excrements to be fearfull in the Dropsie and therefore much more in a naked snatching away of the bloud which withdrawes in a direct passage the vital spirits from the Heart through the Wound whether that bloud be accounted bad or good or neutral First of all I have proved that as well those things offend in begging of the principle which are supposed concerning a putrified continual and burning Fever as those which are supposed concerning the emissions of putrified bloud Wherefore in speaking according to Numbers I have alwayes found Succours that are made for the snatching away of the strength to be full of deceit as that for a very little ease the Faculties the Porters of Diseases are weakened For even so as drink at the beginning of Fevers seemeth to comfort Thirst for a little space but who is so mad that he would then drink if he knew that the drink would filch away his necessary powers Therefore the ayd of cooling by cutting of a vein is unfaithfull deceitfull and momentany At length concerning neutral bloud which in respect of cutting of a vein is neither good nor evil it is not worth ones labour to speak any thing seeing that which is denyed under a disjoyning may also be denyed copulatively For whether that be neutral bloud which consisteth of a co-mixture of the good with that which is depraved by supposing that to be depraved which is not or that wherein a neutral alteration is introduced for both events the particulars aforesaid do satisfie Lastly That I may cut off the hope that is in Revulsion and so equally take away all co-indications as the wretched privy shifts of obstinacy It is a mad ayd to have cut a vein for this end they for the most part require a plenteous one whether in Fevers or next in the Menstrues for Revulsion because a Feverish matter swims not in the bloud or floats in the veins as a Fish doth in the water but it adheres or sticks fast within to the vessel even as in its own place concerning the occasionall matter I will declare But for the Menstrues in like manner because a separation thereof is made from the whole and that not but by a separating hand of the Archeus But Bloud-letting separates nothing of the separable things because it acts without a foreknowledge of the end and so without choyce But presently after the vessel is opened the more nigh and harmless bloud alway flowes forth the which because other afterwards followes by a continual thred for fear of a vacuum therefore the Menstrues otherwise by the endeavour of Nature collected about the Womb are by cutting of a vein drawn away from thence and go back into the whole Body But if Phlebotomy shall sometimes well succeed in a Woman that is plethorick and full of juyce yet surely in many others it hath given a miserable overthrow For if the Menstrues should offend onely in its quantity while as it is now collected and separated in the veins about the Womb I shall willingly admit of an individual betokening of Phlebotomy and onely in the Case supposed But the Menstrues if it shall flow in a well-constituted Womb it abundantly satisfies its own ends and in this respect Revulsion is in vain although the Supposition supposeth it to be even an impossible thing For Bloud-letting is nothing but a meer and undistinct emptying out of the bloud But the veins being emptyed they out of hand recall unto themselves any kind of bloud whatsoever from on every side Because as they are the greedy sheaths of bloud so also are they impatient of Vacuity or emptiness And therefore the veins that are emptyed do allure the Menstrues designed for utterance That is being in this respect once enrouled by Nature in the Catalogue of Excrements But Derivation because it is a sparing effusion of bloud so it be made out of veines convenient it hath often profited in many locall Diseases and so in Fevers it is impertinent But they urge that the cutting of a vein is so necessary in a Pleurisie that it is enjoyned under a Capital punishment For truly they say that unlesse the bloud flowing together unto the Ribs be pulleâ— back by the effusion of much bloud there is danger least the Pleurisie do soon kill the man by choaking of him Surely I let out the bloud of no person that hath a Pleurisie and such a cure is safe certain profitable and sound None of them perisheth whereas in the mean time under Phlebotomy many do at length perish with a long or lingring Consumption and experience a Relapse every Year For according to Galen Whosoever they be that are not perfectly cured on the fortieth day become Consumptious But I perfectly cure them within few dayes neither do they feel a Relapse Neither indeed have I alone my secrets for this purpose But moreover I have seen a Country man curing all Pleuritical persons at the third draught For he used the dung of an Horse for a man and of a Nag for a woman which he dissolved in Ale and gave the expressed strayning to drink Such indeed is the ignorance of Physitians and so great the obstinacy of the Schooles That God gives knowledge to Rusticks and Little ones which he denyes to those that are blown up with Heathenish Learning We must now see if there be any use of Revulsion in Fevers For indeed since the work of Revulsion is not primarily any other thing than the cutting of a vein whereunto the succeeding bloud is by accident hoped to come and that by the benefit of that thing it should not flow unto the place affected Upon this Position it followes That by such an Euacuation the offensive Feverish bloud so I connivingly speak shall be drawn as dispersed into the veines which otherwise lurking in its own Nest far from the Heart could not so cruelly communicate the Ferment of its own hurt unto the Heart which is to say that it should
Choler that was wont to incline to the urine out of the little bag of the Gaul unto the head And which way should that be done Shall the diseasie matter it self voluntarily ascend to the brain and shall it be the mover of its own self Then at least wise besides great absurdities it should of necessity be that every such Fever should not consist out of the little bag of the Gaul which none hath as yet hitherto supposed But to what end should a Fever which they account a meer accident stir up Choler to the head Shall it be judged best in nature to have now at length banished the matter of the disease which a good while lurked in the midriffs into the head Or what if it wandringly floateth in the veins as being seperated from the blood and of its own accord shall climbe upwards why is it not rather banished out of doores thorow an accustomed passage Shall mans nature now procure its own death contrary to the universal endeavour of things Shall such a fury at length be fit for the sequestring of Choler which was not seperable but by an appeased vigour Doth happily the Gaul being defirous of a wandring state of its own accord and voluntarily seperate it self and ascend to the head At length in what bottle doth Gaul lurk in the head that it may stir up a Feverish madnesse Is it in the bosoms of the brain Is it in the feigned arterial weaving of Galen But on both sides it should presently be mortal and Gaul would drop down thorow the doating nostrils Again if watery urins in Fevers after yellow ones do afford safe doatages with laughter Yet surely according to Hippocrates then these kind of doating delusions shall not be from Gaul And so neither shall the urine being now spoiled of its yellow Colour have that for which it may be deprived of Choler nor whereby it may lay aside snatched Choler into the brain For truly doatages with laughter exclude all Choler At length in the Jaundise the brain it self is yellow But if the Jaundise be from Choler why is it without doatage Without an Erisipelas or great inflammation of all the bowels But if not Gaul it self but the vapour thereof an unconsiderate evasion ascending into the brain stirs up these doatages of Fevers why therefore will the Schools have the Gaul materially and according to its tincture to fail in the urine A waterish urine therefore after yellow ones in Fevers denoteth that the tincture of the urine or liquid dung it is the liquour of meats in the bowels immediatly before they become dung is without mixture deteined in the midriffs For a vein strongly beating in the places about the short ribs denotes madnesse to come according to Hippocrates As the Liquid dung being not rightly purged tumulteth in the Hypochondrials Therefore they are meer dreams which the Schools do hitherto as it were from a three-legged stool foretel concerning the colour of the urine They have indeed learned by the effect and observance that things are wont mutually to follow each other To wit that doatage in a Fever is from a cleer urine after a yellow one Rightly indeed if they had stuck in a naked observation but when they came unto the causes and disposed of those causes according to the rite or custome of Theoremes and command of feigned principles they all of them rashly subscribed unto each other hitherto For there is no Choler in nature never any Gaul in the urine and much lesse that which may be seperated from thence and carried unto the head There is no Choler in the whole body because there never was any in nature Neither is Gaul Choler but the very liquour of the Gaul is a vital bowel of great moment between which and the kidney and brain nothing interposeth as common Neither is there any passage nor fit society of the Gaul with the urine Neither doth it appertaine unto the Gaul whether the urine be watery or yellow and thick The chest of the Gaul hath not a vein unto the head But if they will have Gaul to be brought thorow the hollow vein how should not Gaul mix it self with the blood Should not the whole blood of those feverish persons be bitter By what channel therefore shall it hasten unto the head What conducter shall lead Gaul unto the head What shall seperate it from the blood that it may not be deteined in its journy To what end should nature attempt such impertinencies How shall the blood remain without contagton from the forreign Gaul That ascent shall be a voluntary motion or a sending or a drawing A dreaming old woman said so long ago and the Schools have followed her For if Gauly Choler climb by its own motion now every man shall have a continual doatage But to what end shall the hollow vein send Gaul unto the brain Shall it thus cure the Fever Shall it diminish the burning heat But surely the feverish matter remaines shut up whether Choler be snatcht from the urine or Gaul out of the little bag into the brain or not To what end also should the brain allure Choler unto it self being moist with a lively juice and that a far better and nearer And that thing also fights with the ordination of the Liver For nothing is sent or drawn at least without the choice end and appoyntment of the Archeus Is therefore Choler carried into the brain from the wedlock of the other three Humours or is it drawn by this Surely the brain was thus already before befooled and not after the comming of Choler neither had it need of Choler for to doate At length why doth a watery urine rather argue a doating delusion in a continual Fever than in a intermitting one than in a drinker Than in the disease of the stone Than in a vitiated concoction of the Stomach But because death is in the midriff where the Fever then also is Vain therefore is the fiction of the Schools concerning yellow Choler in the urine and of its journy unto the brain But besides when as a little cloud appeareth in urines straightway the Physitian cries out and as if himself had overcome the disease saing with the consent and observance of the Schools that the diseasifying Humour is concocted and that it is safely to be purged for the future I will shew first what that little cloud may be And from thence any one shall at length judge that in the aforesaid particulars nothing but meer mockeries are conteined For indeed that little cloud or swim is a sign of the digestion of the stomach but not of a diseasifying matter But be it a sign of digestion because the ferments of the stomach Gaul and Liver have returned which before were hindred shut up c. Whence there is hope that the strength will be recovered otherwise the matter which they call that which maketh the disease is never attempted to be concocted Because nature intends not to
â—â—â—gth returning to me and being cured staid with me at Vilvord for the space of half an year neverthelesse on the same day wherein she returned home the hidden Leprousie in Scalds again re-budded I have also known women who were readily inclined to a miscarriage although they travelled the Country in a Coach and the journy had prosperously succeeded yet in the river they felt a commotion in their womb and being carried from the bank by a Coach that thy slide into an excessive flux of menstruous blood And so the river strivingly imitating the heaven steals away the believed honour from the Planets I speak of Summer and so neither is cold in the tiveâ— then somewhat suspected to be accused Also the cold of Autumne in travelling the country withstood or hurt not so much as in the month called August the river nor the shaking of the Coach brought not so much hurt as a quiet saying At length not a watery vapour wandring about in the river For truly in journying the Countryon rainy days the declared calamities happened not As neither by living about fenny places but in rivers fit for flowing and ebbing a few hours hath brought on them these troubles of the Plague Wheals Leprousy and smal Pox which on lane did not arise For the water twice every day for sakes the ships and banks and the bottom is of a strong smelling stink through an hoary putrefaction wherefore the river speakes in silence and proves the hurts of its odour putrified by continuance which I shall by and by shew For that thing also is therefore proper not so much unto the sea shoat as to the bank of rivers For there is no hoary putrefaction at the falt Sea and sand of its bottom such as is in half-sweet or breachy rivers wherefore their waters are scarce ever altogether clean and they want an odour proper to themselves The Heaven therefore is free from our contagion as also being innocent of the accusations of the ignorant it wants the fault of revenge They are the Reliques of Paganism the which unlesse the School of medicine shall shun let it know that the giver of lights will not reach forth his benefits unto them CHAP. IV. A forreign new Plague or contagion ALL diseases have not come at once into the place of exercise surely the ages of our Ancestours were happy wherein but few infirmities had bent their sword against man weaknesse And the product following upon Adams transgression hath by degrees adjoyned the principles of nature with us For Astrologers do as yet to this day flee together unto the limited positions of the stars unto the wraths and un-co-sufferablenesses of their oppositions and the conjoyning combates of malignant lights whereby the first Fever first Apoplexy or first was bred For although I am not wont diligently to search into things past which may not profit but hurt and much lesse have I accustomed my self to enquire into those things the demonstrations whereof I could not obtain give make or hope for yet I could not but deride the folly of Paganisme referred on the stars For I could the more easily assent unto Astrologers if a Fever being once bred and an Apoplexy having arisen they had ceased when that constellation ceased Also if they could demonstrate in what Inn the while they should inhabite the displacing of severish stars being once divded or drawn into diverse parts Wherefore in the book of long life I first was constrained to describe the entrance of all diseases and death into humane nature from their original And so I clearly understand and seeingly behold that they were the reliques of paganisme whosoever hath dared to extend the offices and ordinations of the Stars beyond the text of the Holy Scriptures which saith that the stars are to us only for signes seasons days and years For if I should assent unto judiciary Astrologers I should suppose a feverish or Pestilent seed being once bred to have afterwards entred into nature not indeed that its generation did continue thence-forward as the off-spring of a certain curse but of creation But since most diseases do at length end into health if at leastwise they do not die with the sick themselves and for the most part without the raysing up of a new off-spring it should of necessity be that if they had at sometime begun by reason of unlucky lights a ridiculous or blasphemous word for a Christian neither could then begin without them at this day if those lights having thus con-joyntly encountred are to be judged the efficient causes of diseases Therefore I beleived after that I had more fully unfolded the re-solutions of hidden bodies by the fire that there were from the beginning the same principles and rootes of diseases which there are also at this day The which I have cleerly enough demonstrated in the section of the original of medicine in the treatise concerning diseases in general I have also believed that some diseases in the beginning were as it were in their infancy more gentle and that they had more swift progresses and also more easy extinguishments by reason of the former strength of humane nature yet that some diseases were in their beginning more fierce the which indeed do not so adhere to the root of humane frailty but are attained as companions with a Plague or contagion as being forreign For as natures were in times past more strong the which as they are the recievers so also the Physitianesses of diseases so now I experience the seeds of diseases daily to profit to make a more strong impression and to wax very fierce and that our nature by how much the longer it goes on and the more unseasonably proceedes by so much the more negligently also it hearkens unto remedies For indeed in the days of our Fathers the Lues venerea or foul disease till that time hitherto unknown arose together with its chambermaids and lackeys But the 1424. year and the siege of Parthenopolis or Magdeburg and the age of that Lues and the first nativity thereof is taken notice of At length whatsoever hath once grown tough in our possession although it may perish in those individuals yet it afterwards keeps its particular kind and scarce knows how to dye as long as the command of him remaines who sendeth a spot into the flesh As the Scurvy Plague of Hungany c. unknown to our Ancestours but our stripes increase daily because impieties also are multiplied Truly diseases are changed are masked are increased and do degenerate through their coupling therefore henceforward we must deliberate with a more earnest thought concerning more profound remedies but from the growing worse of a disease I have conjectured that a more secure art of healing ought to arise than that which hitherto by frequent blood-letting and the poysonous resolving of laxative medicines their bonds being conjoyned fore-timely draws mortals into the place of burial For I guesse at it because I see the Lues
the steel be lighter than the Load-stone it is drawn to the Loadstone but otherwise if the stone be lighter than the steel Because the drawing is not in the one and the obedience of the drawing in the other but there is one only mutual inclinative drawing and not of the drawer with a skirmishing of the resister And so from hence it is manifest that a desire is in nature before the drawing and that the drawing followes the desire as some latter thing as the effect doth its cause If therefore according to the testimony of truth all things are to be discerned by their works and the fruits do bewray their own tree truly such attractive inclinations cannot subsist without the testimony of a certain co-participated life sensation knowledge and election Moreover neither is the life of minerals lesse than the life of vegetables distinguished from the animal life by their own life and their generations among themselves Because that which is vegetable and that which is mineral do not operate but one or a few proper things and the same things as yet with a precisenesse interchangeable course property inclination and necessity as oft as a proper object is present with them but a living creature operates many things and those neither constrainedly as neither by accident of the object but altogether by desire well pleasing appetite will and choice of some certain deliberation Seeing the first operation of the same is life but the second a proper appetite desire or love or delight At length thirdly there is a deliberative and distinctive choice of objects So I have seen a Bull that was filled with lust to have dâ—spised an old Cow but an heifer being offered him to have again presently after wantâ—nized But the first operation of things obscurely living is a power unto a seminal essentialnesse Next the second is an exercise of powers and properties At length the third operation is a greater and lesse inclination motion and knowledge The which indeed flow not from a deliberative election or choice but from a potestative interchangeable course strangenesse likenesse appropriation purity or unaptnesse of objects wherefore it was a right opinion of the Antients that all things are in all after the manner of the receiver But those powers by reason of their undiscerned obscurity and the sloath of diligent searchers have been scarce believed but by predecessours and moderns were not considered and by reason of the difficulties of accesse they have circumvented the world with a wandring despaire and with the name of occult properties have hood-winkt themselves by their own sluggishnesse But my scope in this place hath been that if in Herbs and Minerals there are such kind of notions the Authoresses and moderatresses of hidden properties the same by a far more potent reason and after a more plentiful manner do inhabite in flesh and blood To wit excellently with a particular and affected notion motion inclination appetite love interchangeable course hostility and resistance as with that which occurs in us through the service of the five senses Even so that in flesh and blood there is a certain seminal notion distinction imagination of love conveniency likenesse and also of fear terror sorrow resistance c. with a beholding of gain and losse offence and complacency of superiority I say and inferiority and so of the agent and the patient Because those necessary dependances of a consequent necessity do flow from and accompany the aforesaid sensations or acts of feeling The which surely in the vital blood are characterized in a higher degree by reason of the inbred Archeus the Author and workman of any of these passions whatsoever than otherwise in the whole kind that is not soulified or quickned For a tooth from a dead carcase that dyed by the extinguishment of its powers constraineth any tooth of a living man to wither and fall out only by its touching because it compels it to be despised by the life The which a tooth from a dead carcase slain by a violent death or presently extinguished by a sharp disease doth not likewise perform In like manner the hair of a dead carcass whose life was taken away by degrees by a voluntary death makes persons bauld only by its touching Watts and brands brought on the Young by the perturbation of a woman great with child through the touching of a dead carcase that died of its own accord and by degrees untill part of the branded mark shall wax more inwardly cold the mark also doth by degrees voluntarily vanish away Observe well with me whether these are not the testimonies of another act of feeling than that of cold Moreover whether in that same sensation there be not a natural knowledge and fear of death connexed which things are as yet also in the dead carcass For truly a Tetanus or straight extension of a dead carcase or stiffnesse thereof is not a certain congelation of cold But a mear convulsion of the muscles abhorring death and living even after the departure of the soul For from hence the dead carcases of those who die by a violent death because they die the faculties of their flesh being not altogether extinguished they feel not the aforesaid Tetanus but a good while after CHAP. X. A living creature imaginative I Have said that Herbs and Minerals do imagine by a certain instinct of nature that is after their own manner so in the next place that the blood and mummie have certain native conceptions in order and likenesse unto man which things that they may be directed unto our purpose concerning the Plague thou mayest remember after what sort the perturbations of a woman great with child her hand being applied unto some certain member although unadvisedly rashly and without a concurrence of the will do decipher the member in the Young co-agreeing in co-touching with the image of the object of that perturbation with the image I say but not with an idle signature But suppose thou that her desire was to a cherry verily a cherry is deciphered in the young and in a co-like member such as the child-bearing woman shall touch with her hand which cherry waxeth green yellow and red every year at the same stations wherein the cherries of a tree do attain those interchanges of colours And which is far more wonderful it hath happened that the Young so marked hath suffered these signatures of colours in the Low-countries in the moneths called May and June which afterwards expressed the same in Spain in those called March and April And at length the Young returning into his countrie shewed them again in a bravery in those called May and June Also under a strong impression of a woman great with child not onely a new generation of a cherry is brought in thereupon but it also happens that the old one is to be changed and it constrains a seminal generation to give place yea and the image of God being now lively or in the readinesse
and rare stink of Caves accompanies an Earthquake or an unaccustomed stink happens in Lâ—kes then endemiâ—al signs have occasional powers These things of a future plague But as to what concerns a plague being present truly I could never by the pulse or urine even although it were distilled know the plague to be present Paracelsus indeed ridiculously enough numbers it among the diseases of the Liver and among Tartarous ones even as elsewhere in a Treatise and in overthrowing the fiction of Tartars I have profesly prosecuted This man attributes an unnamed pulse to the Pest which he calls a fourth But I although I have seriously and often heeded yet I acknowledge my own unaptness that I never found such a pulse But I have well noted about the end of life an unequally inordinate creeping and at length an intermitting pulse But I have never found a fourth or a sixth pulse diverse from the rest from a peculiar bewraying of the plague but a pestilent pulse different from continual malignant Fevers hath never offered it self unto me The urine therefore and the pulse have never according to my unskilfulness discovered the plague yea while I more narrowly rowled over the writings of Paracelsus I knew that he was never present with one infected with or about to die of the plague In the mean time the judgement of the plague loads the conscience as well in respect of the party afflicted as of the family of the same because the Pest doth by a certain similitude resemble a Pretor or chief Officer in a crime who requires a loss both of life and goâ—ds and so a rash judgement of the Pest contains a crime For to have known the plague by the shape of an unwonted Fever may be easie to another surely unto me it hath been very difficult Thou wilt say the Pest is with a Fever and headach but that is fâ—miliar unto other Fevers Vomiting and the drowsie evil doth oft-times accompany the plague but that is not altogether unwonted elsewhere There are in the Pest Buboes in the groyn Parotides or little Bladders behind the ears those signs are not unfrequently proper to Fevers that are free from the plague There are also black spots in the plague the which I have seen in women that have been strangled by their womb There is also a Purple Fever and likewise leaden Pustules or Wheals without the Pest as also a Carbuncle doth oftentimes happen without the plague But as oft as many of those signs do concur there is no difficult judgement concerning the Pest for a Bubo in the groyn little bladders or spots from the beginning before much cruelty of the plague do denounce the plague So also a Carbuncle or Bubo and a very small tumour is far more painful in the pest than any where else and they are present almost before the increase of the Fever and they prevent the suspition that they sprang from the Fever so that those miseries of the skin do go before in the Pest which in other Fevers happen more late as it were the products thereof a pestilent Bubo being as yet small persently and out of hand existeth as cruel without pain of the member and lessening of the Fever and paineth greatly But if a Bubo issue forth after a fore-going pain of the member it carries the judgement of an unfit remedy Therefore they are the ordinary signs of the Pest being already entertained if before or presently after the beginning of the Fever a Glandule Parotis behind the ear Carbuncle Bladder Pustule or spot shall suddenly invade and that with the greatest pain For in other Fevers they do not so notably pain the place indeed is red and swells before the malady be bred which hath not it self in such a manner in the plague And the Pest is confirmed by vomiting by an excelling pain of the head by a deep drowsiness by a doating delusion and by a dejected appetite if they shall suddenly invade For the Pest that comes unto one from far being drawn in through a contracting of the poyson enters as it were the pain of a pricking Bodkin and presently with the greatest pain marks the part which it strikes with a swelling with a wheal with a little bladder or with a spot Even as also that which enters in by an odour strikes the stomach and head with a suddain pain or sleepiâ—ying anguish or stirs up the stomach it self as it were a spur unto vomiting But if it springs from an internal poyson it hath a fore-going Fever upon which some of the aforesaid signs do straightway succeed But that Pest which invades from a snatched terrour is speedy and is discerned by the testimony of the sick But that which hath arisen from some kâ—nd of terrour of the Archeus but not of the man and which lurks in the Tartar of the blood is indeed in a degâ—ee unto the plague and breaks forth more slowly than is wont and is easily overcome unlesse the negligence of the sick shall hinder yet its delay is the longer in the journey for for the most part the accompanying signs of the Pest are known timely enough that the remedy which shall be prompt and which shall be peremptory may rightly perform its office Nevertheless it should be my wish to know the Pest in its making For that which produceth its signates only after death takes away a great number from amongst us and destroys many families because it hath already become mortal before it makes it self manifest or be known because it hath first finished its task with the hicket fainting and an Escharre in some Noble place For they call this the Tragedy of one day therefore a Diary or Ephemeral Fever Not that the Pest hath the Spirit of Life for its proper seat although there was never any plague which hath not also infected the Archeus and so also by that title every plague ought always to be a Diary Fever But whatsoever of the Archeus is conquered by the Pest that consequently is by and by separated by that vital Archeus At length that also brings most speedy death which besieged the Archeus of some bowel because the birds of death do continually fly from thence which trample the rest of the Archeus under their feet For I wish and wish again that we may not know the Pest too late nor from the event For a speedy death although it may produce its own signs yet it rather profits for the future but nothing those that are gone and past For some to this end anoint the soals of the feet with fresh Lard they apply a Puppy which if he lick they perswade themselves that the chance is free from the plague But others heat a piece of Lard at the feet of the sick party and cherish it for sometime under his arm-pits or in his groyn and they say that this will not be devoured by a dog if the plague be present which thing deserves no credit for the
it demonstrates that the strange fable and tumult of Phaeton and that the name of Electrum or choice remedy hath not vainly been co-incident unto it Let him laugh who will at the rubbings of amber on our pulses let him run back unto magnum oportet and at least he shall admire at the rubbings of apples for the abolishment of warts not without fruit For truly if a towel being rub'd on a pestilent Bubo doth snatch to it and propagate the contagion why may not also frictions or rubbings for a good end bring a mumial co-suiting of disposition who I pray you may not suspect amber that is rub'd on a pestilential emunctory and if the poyson why also by a like processe is he not at least in doubt that it hath contracted a mumial co-resemblance For I remember that cheese being carried about under the aâ—mpit and swallowed by a dog it served instead of a snare or bait and that he so left his own Master that he believed him to be carrâ—ed away by a stranger in a ship Truly if bruiâ— beasts will they nill they do feel this limitation of the mummy and do obey it yet they enjoy a much more free choice than those things which from an Archeal conception fall under a Zenexton I see not why it shall be wickednesse to have attributed the same limitation unto Amber For it is a thing that grows unto admiration being in times past brought unto us for the rosin of a tree at length being believed by others to be a mineral yet is it sweat out of the Danish sea At leastwise nothing is more acceptable to the stomach bowels sinews yea and to the brain than amber being dissolved in the spirit of wine Cease thou therefore to wonder that so singular an increaser being also endowed with so singular a comfortative and preservative faculty and signed with so singular and attractive a faculty is able to root out the Pest from our places and members for the comforting whereof it grows by a singular goodnesse of divine providence For neither doth it favour of all unlikelihood of truth that amber doth by rubbing attract an odour by reason whereof it is rather appropriated to this individual than the other For it is plainly a porous and volatile Gum and therefore the receiver of a mumial odour which â—t received by rubbing For I have known a method whereby the virtue of an herb and animal is imprinted on precious stones and so that however exactly they are washed afterwards yet the imprinted faculty remains resident and safe For a yellow Topaz as through a moderate heat of asheâ— it loosâ—th its yellownesse so by the heat of the Sun it recovereth the yellownesse which it had lost in the ashes through the same degree of heat Red Coâ—al by rubbing it on a woman that is sick of her womb contracteth a remaining paleness but if it be rubbed on the flesh of a healthy woman it recovers the ancient rednesse of its brightness In the next place glasses the most closed or shut up of solid bodies wherein the essences or Magisteries of Civet c. had been I have seen to have kept those forreign odours after repeated and tedious washings yea and a glasse so to have kept the attractive power of a loadstone because a magistery of the loadstone had been framed in it If therefore such things are wrought in a glasse why not also in amber which by reason of its porous and volatile matter hath it self in manner of a hogshead which being new reserves the odour that once seasoned it Therefore it 's no wonder if amber retain seasoning odours especially if it be born about by the same person whose mumial exhalations it received by friction Nor also is it of much concernment if it divorceth the testimonies of the nostrils For we also do not discern by a footstep whose footstep it may be For if the holy Scripture do commend a great virtue in stones they do not understand that of dissolved stones for the art of resolving them was not as yet then commonly made known not of the powders of Stones being drunk the virtue whereof being not co-mixed with the dungs but for a little while slides away in passing thorow the body Therefore the speech is of entire stones which ought to be as well the attractives as the expulsives of the malady and therefore their virtue is commendable for a Zenexton If therefore a stone hath great virtue for the use of man and the hardest of precious stones themselves are by the testimony of the wise man fruitful in virtue that must needs happen by beaming into the body which they touch at well nigh like unto the stars and therefore also amber through its irradiating transparency and a more inclining obedience of effluxing shall in no wise be more sluggish than gems and the faculty thereof which otherwise sleeps as it were bedrowsied no wonder if it be stirred up by rubbings and heats especially because an Adamant or Diamond although it lose nothing of it self yet by rubbing it also allureth chaffs For neither doth amber draw chaffs or moats unlesse it be first rubbed For it is a signate teaching that frictions ought to go before if the bedrowfied power thereof ought to be stirred up by aâ—akening it out of its sleep and to influx it s ordained office of succour into us At leastwise I testifie that a piece of amber as it resembles a gem or precious stone yet can be much more easily attained by the poor man than precious stones And moreover Paracelsus highly boasteth of the invention of the magnet or loadstone of man whereby he supposeth that the Pestiferous air is uncessantly introduced and so he promiseth more powerful virtues to be in his Zenexton of drawing outwards than there are belonging to our feigned magnet of drawing inwards But surely that man hath seemed to me to be â—ittle constant unto and little expert in his own doctrine concerning the Plague divulged in so many books to wit while he maketh the heaven to be the Archer of the plague and that this plague is nought but a wound of the heaven as an angry parent which thing if he judgeth to be true that poyson at least is not drawn by our Magnet which is darted into us from so many thousand miles space and either the Magnet is undeservedly accused while as it is without fault and his Zenexton is in vain directed and hung on the out-side of the body against the drawing of a feigned Load-stone or he understood not the causes of the appropriation of a Zenexton or at leastwise he might think that he had dictated but dull causes of the Pest To what end therefore doth the remembrance of that Magnet conduâ—e in this place the praise of that invention For truly a Zenexton hath nothing common with that Magnet nor against the same Be it so for let there be a Magnet let us grant it by supposing a falshood