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The Anatomy of Melancholy, 2 of 4, the First Partition, by Robert Burton 1621. A Puke(TM) Audiobook
Part One, Introduction:
https://rumble.com/v4d2ddr-anatomy-of-melancholy-part-1-of-4-introduction.-a-puke-tm-audiobook.html
THE FIRST PARTITION.
THE FIRST SECTION, MEMBER, SUBSECTION.
Man's Excellency, Fall, Miseries, Infirmities; The causes of them.
Man's Excellency.
Man the most excellent and noble creature of the world, "the principal and mighty work of God, wonder of Nature," as Zoroaster calls him; a miracle of audacious nature, "the marvel of marvels," as Plato; "the abridgment and epitome of the world," as Pliny; microcosm, a little world, a model of the world, sovereign lord of the earth, viceroy of the world, sole commander and governor of all the creatures in it; to whose empire they are subject in particular, and yield obedience; far surpassing all the rest, not in body only, but in soul; an image of an image, created to God's own image, to that immortal and incorporeal substance, with all the faculties and powers belonging unto it; was at first pure, divine, perfect, happy, "created after God in true holiness and righteousness;" Congruent to God, free from all manner of infirmities, and put in Paradise, to know God, to praise and glorify him, to do his will, that he may give birth to gods like the gods, as an old poet says, to propagate the church.
Man's Fall and Misery.
But this most noble creature, Alas, a sad and tearful change, one exclaims, O pitiful change! is fallen from that he was, and forfeited his estate, become a miserable man, a castaway, a caitiff, one of the most miserable creatures of the world, if he be considered in his own nature, an unregenerate man, and so much obscured by his fall that, some few relics excepted, he is inferior to a beast, "Man in honor that understandeth not, is like unto beasts that perish," so David esteems him: a monster by stupendous metamorphoses, a fox, a dog, a hog, what not? Much changed from that? How much altered from that he was; before blessed and happy, now miserable and accursed; "He must eat his meat in sorrow," subject to death and all manner of infirmities, all kinds of calamities.
A Description of Melancholy.
“Great travail is created for all men, and an heavy yoke on the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother's womb, until that day they return to the mother of all things Namely, their thoughts, and fear of their hearts, and their imagination of things they wait for, and the day of death. From him that sitteth in the glorious throne, to him that sitteth beneath in the earth and ashes; from him that is clothed in blue silk and weareth a crown, to him that is clothed in simple linen. Wrath, envy, trouble, and restlessness, and fear of death, and rigor, and strife, and such things come to both man and beast, but sevenfold to the ungodly." All this befalls him in this life, and peradventure eternal misery in the life to come.
Impulsive Cause of Man's Misery and Infirmities.
The impulsive cause of these miseries in man, this privation or destruction of God's image, the cause of death and diseases, of all temporal and eternal punishments, was the sin of our first parent Adam, in eating of the forbidden fruit, by the devil's instigation and allurement. With these disobedience, pride, ambition, intemperance, incredulity, curiosity; from whence proceeded original sin, and that general corruption of mankind, as from a fountain, flowed all bad inclinations and actual transgressions which cause our several calamities inflicted upon us for our sins. And this belike is that which our fabulous poets have shadowed unto us in the tale of Pandora's box, which being opened through her curiosity, filled the world full of all manner of diseases. It is not curiosity alone, but those other crying sins of ours, which pull these several plagues and miseries upon our heads. For where there is sin, there is a tempest, as Chrysostom well observe. "Fools by reason of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted." “Fear comes like sudden desolation, and destruction like a whirlwind, affliction and anguish,” because they did not fear God. "Are you shaken with wars?" as Cyprian well urges to Demetrius, “are you molested with dearth and famine? Is your health crushed with raging diseases? Is mankind generally tormented with epidemic maladies? Tis all for your sins," Haggai, One 9, 10; Amos One; Jerimiah Seven. God is angry, punisheth and threatenseth, because of their obstinacy and stubbornness, they will not turn unto him. "If the earth be barren then for want of rain, if dry and squalid, it yields no fruit, if your fountains be dried up, your wine, corn, and oil blasted, if the air be corrupted, and men troubled with diseases, tis by reason of their sins:" which like the blood of Abel cry loud to heaven for vengeance, Lamentations, five 15. "That we have sinned, therefore our hearts are heavy," Isaiah Six, 11, and 12. “We roar like bears, and mourn like doves, and want health, and more, for our sins and trespasses.” But this we cannot endure to hear or to take notice of, Jerimiah, two, 30. "We are smitten in vain and receive no correction;" and chapter five, 3. “Thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; they have refused to receive correction; they have not returned. Pestilence he hath sent, but they have not turned to him," Amos Four. Herod could not avoid John the Baptist, nor Domitian endure Apollonius to tell the causes of the plague at Ephesus, his injustice, incest, adultery, and the like.
To punish therefore this blindness and obstinacy of ours as a concomitant cause and principal agent, is God's just judgment in bringing these calamities upon us, to chastise us, I say, for our sins, and to satisfy God's wrath. For the law requires obedience or punishment, as you may read at large, Deuteronomy. Twenty eight, 15. "If they will not obey the Lord, and keep his commandments and ordinances, then all these curses shall come upon them." "Cursed in the town and in the field, and more." "Cursed in the fruit of the body, and more." "The Lord shall send thee trouble and shame, because of thy wickedness." And a little after, “The Lord shall smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with emrods, and scab, and itch, and thou canst not be healed; with madness, blindness, and astonishing of heart." This Paul seconds, Romans two, 9. "Tribulation and anguish on the soul of every man that does evil." Or else these chastisements are inflicted upon us for our humiliation, to exercise and try our patience here in this life to bring us home, to make us to know God ourselves, to inform and teach us wisdom. “Therefore is my people gone into captivity, because they had no knowledge; therefore is the wrath of the Lord kindled against his people, and he hath stretched out his hand upon them." He is desirous of our salvation. Eager for our salvation, says Lemnius, and for that cause pulls us by the ear many times, to put us in mind of our duties: "That they which erred might have understanding, as Isaiah speaks twenty-nine, 24 and so to be reformed." "I am afflicted, and at the point of death," so David confesseth of himself, Psalm eighty-eight, verse 15, verse 9. "Mine eyes are sorrowful through mine affliction:" and that made him turn unto God. Great Alexander in the midst of all his prosperity, deified by a company of parasites, and now made a god, when he saw one of his wounds bleed, remembered that he was but a man, and remitted of his pride. As Pliny well perceived; "In sickness the mind reflects upon itself, with judgment surveys itself, and abhors its former courses;" so much so that he concludes to his friend Marius, "that it were the period of all philosophy, if we could so continue to sound, or perform but a part of that which we promised to do, being sick." Whoso is wise then, will consider these things," as David did in Psalm one hundred and forty four, verse last, and whatever fortune befalls him, make use of it. If he be in sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity, seriously to recount with himself, why this or that malady, misery, this or that incurable disease is inflicted upon him; it may be for his good, so it is expedient as Peter said of his daughter's illness. Bodily sickness is for his soul's health, he would have perished if he had not perished, had he not been visited, he had utterly perished; for "the Lord correcteth him whom he loveth, even as a father doth his child in whom he delighteth." If he be safe and sound on the other side, and free from all manner of infirmity; and to whom
May grace, form, and health abound.
And the world was won, not by lack of purses.
And that he has grace, beauty, favor, health,
A clean diet, and abound in wealth.
Yet in the midst of his prosperity, let him remember that caveat of Moses, "Beware that he do not forget the Lord his God;" that he be not puffed up, but acknowledge them to be his good gifts and benefits, and "the more he hath, to be more thankful," as Agapetianus adviseth and use them aright.
Instrumental Causes of our Infirmities.
Now the instrumental causes of these our infirmities, are as diverse as the infirmities themselves; stars, heavens, elements, and more. And all those creatures which God hath made, are armed against sinners. They were indeed once good in themselves, and that they are now many of them pernicious unto us, is not in their nature, but our corruption, which hath caused it. For from the fall of our first parent Adam, they have been changed, the earth accursed, the influence of stars, altered, the four elements, beasts, birds, plants, are now ready to offend us. "The principal things for the use of man, are water, fire, iron, salt, meal, wheat, honey, milk, oil, wine, clothing, good to the godly, to the sinners turned to evil," Ecclesiasticus, also known as Sirch, thirty-nine, 26. "Fire, and hail, and famine, and dearth, all these are created for vengeance," Ecclesiasticus. Thirty nine, 29. The heavens threaten us with their comets, stars, planets, with their great conjunctions, eclipses, oppositions, quartiles, and such unfriendly aspects. The air with its meteors, thunder and lightning, intemperate heat and cold, mighty winds, tempests, unseasonable weather; from which proceed dearth, famine, plague, and all sorts of epidemic diseases, consuming infinite myriads of men. At Cairo in Egypt, every third year, as it is related by Boterus, and others, 300,000 on the day of the plague; and 200,000, in Constantinople, every fifth or seventh at the utmost. How doth the earth terrify and oppress us with terrible earthquakes, which are most frequent in China, Japan, and those eastern climates, swallowing up sometimes six cities at once? How doth the water rage with his inundations, irruptions, flinging down towns, cities, villages, bridges, and more, besides shipwrecks; whole islands are sometimes suddenly overwhelmed with all their inhabitants in Zealand, Holland, and many parts of the continent drowned, as the lake Erne in Ireland? We see nothing but the corpses of the citadel in the open sea. In the fens of Friesland in 1230, by reason of tempests, the sea drowned many thousands of men and cattle without number, all the country almost, men and cattle in it. How doth the fire rage, that merciless element, consuming in an instant whole cities? What town of any antiquity or note hath not been once, again and again, by the fury of this merciless element, defaced, ruined, and left desolate? in a word
Whom the fire spares, the sea doth drown; whom sea.
Pestilent air doth send to clay;
Whom war escapes, sickness takes away.
To descend to more particulars, how many creatures are at deadly feud with men? Lions, wolves, bears, and more. Some with hoofs, horns, tusks, teeth, nails: How many noxious serpents and venomous creatures, ready to offend us with stings, breath, sight, or quite kill us? How many pernicious fishes, plants, gums, fruits, seeds, flowers, and so on. could I reckon up on a sudden, which by their very smell many of them, touch, taste, cause some grievous malady, if not death itself? Some make mention of a thousand several poisons: but these are but trifles in respect. The greatest enemy to man, is man, who by the devil's instigation is still ready to do mischief, his own executioner, a wolf, a devil to himself, and others. We are all brethren in Christ, or at least should be, members of one body, servants of one lord, and yet no fiend can so torment, insult over, tyrannise, vex, as one man doth another. Let me not fall therefore, saith David, when wars, plague, famine were offered, into the hands of men, merciless and wicked men:
There are scarcely any men worthy of this name, But wolves have more ferocity. We can for the most part foresee these epidemic diseases, and probably avoid them; Dearths, tempests, plagues, our astrologers foretell us; Earthquakes, inundations, ruins of houses, consuming fires, come by little and little, or make some noise beforehand; but the knaveries, impostures, injuries and villainies of men no art can avoid. We can keep our professed enemies from our cities, by gates, walls and towers, defend ourselves from thieves and robbers by vigilance and weapons; but this malice of men, and their pernicious endeavours, no caution can divert, no vigilance foresee, we have so many secret plots and devices to mischief one another.
Sometimes by the devil's help as magicians, witches: sometimes by impostures, mixtures, poisons, stratagems, single combats, wars, we hack and hew, as if we were born to execution, like Cadmus' soldiers born to consume one another. Tis an ordinary thing to read of a hundred and two hundred thousand men slain in a battle. Besides all manner of tortures, brazen bulls, racks, wheels, strappadoes, guns, engines, and more. For one human body there are more tortures than members: We have invented more torturing instruments, than there be several members in a man's body, as Cyprian well observes. To come nearer yet, our own parents by their offences, indiscretion and intemperance, are our mortal enemies. "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." They cause our grief many times, and put upon us hereditary diseases, inevitable infirmities: they torment us, and we are ready to injure our posterity;
And yet with crimes unknown to us,
Our sons shall mark the coming age their own;
And the latter end of the world, as Paul foretold, is still like to be the worst. We are thus bad by nature, bad by kind, but far worse by art, every man the greatest enemy unto himself. We study many times to undo ourselves, abusing those good gifts which God hath bestowed upon us, health, wealth, strength, wit, learning, art, memory to our own destruction, Your destruction from you. As Judas Maccabeus killed Apollonius with his own weapons, we arm ourselves to our own overthrows; and use reason, art, judgment, all that should help us, as so many instruments to undo us. Hector gave Ajax a sword, which so long as he fought against enemies, served for his help and defense; but after he began to hurt harmless creatures with it, he turned to his own harmless bowels. Those excellent means God hath bestowed upon us, well employed, cannot but much avail us; but if otherwise perverted, they ruin and confound us: and so by reason of our indiscretion and weakness they commonly do, we have too many instances. This Saint Austin acknowledges of himself in his humble confessions, "promptness of wit, memory, eloquence, they were God's good gifts, but he did not use them to his glory." If you will particularly know how, and by what means, consult physicians, and they will tell you, that it is in offending in some of those six non-natural things, of which I shall dilate more at large; they are the causes of our infirmities, our surfeiting, and drunkenness, our immoderate insatiable lust, and prodigious riot. More rubbish than a sword, it is a true saying, the board consumes more than the sword. Our intemperance it is, that pulls so many several incurable diseases upon our heads, that hastens old age, perverts our temperature, and brings upon us sudden death. And last of all, that which crucifies us most, is our own folly, madness, which Jupiter destroys, dementes; by subtraction of his assisting grace God permits it, weakness, want of government, our facility and proneness in yielding to several lusts, in giving way to every passion and disturbance of the mind: by which means we metamorphose ourselves and degenerate into beasts. All which that prince of poets observed of Agamemnon, that when he was well pleased, and could moderate his passion, he was, os eyes and Jovi par: like Jupiter in feature, Mars in valour, Pallas in wisdom, another god; but when he became angry, he was a lion, a tiger, a dog, and more, there appeared no sign or likeness of Jupiter in him; so we, as long as we are ruled by reason, correct our inordinate appetite, and conform ourselves to God's word, are as so many saints: but if we give reins to lust, anger, ambition, pride, and follow our own ways, we degenerate into beasts, transform ourselves, overthrow our constitutions, provoke God to anger, and heap upon us this of melancholy, and all kinds of incurable diseases, as a just and deserved punishment of our sins.
Subsection Two. The Definition, Number, Division of Diseases.
What a disease is, almost every physician defines. Fernelius calls it an "affection of the body contrary to nature." Fuschius and Crato, "an hindrance, hurt, or alteration of any action of the body, or part of it." Tholosanus, “a dissolution of that league which is between body and soul, and a disturbance of it; as health the perfection, and makes to the preservation of it." Labeo in Agellius, "an ill habit of the body, opposite to nature, hindering the use of it." Others otherwise, all to this effect.
Number of Diseases. How many diseases there are, is a question not yet determined; Pliny reckons up 300 from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot: elsewhere he says, the multitude of diseases is infinite, their number is infinite. However it was in those times, it boots not; in our days I am sure the number is much augmented:
Emaciation, and new fever,
The band lies down on the ground.
For besides many epidemic diseases unheard of, and altogether unknown to Galen and Hippocrates, as scurvy, small-pox, plica, sweating sickness, Gallic disease, and more, we have many proper and peculiar almost to every part.
No man free from some Disease or other.
No man among us so sound, of so good a constitution, that hath not some impediment of body or mind. We all suffer from our own infirmities, we have all our infirmities, first or last, more or less. There will be peradventure in an age, or one of a thousand, like Zenophilus the musician in Pliny, that may happily live 105 years without any manner of impediment; from Pollius Romulus, that can preserve himself "with wine and oil;" a man as fortunate as Quintus Metellus, of whom Valerius so much brags; a man as healthy as Otto Herwardus, a senator of Augsburg in Germany, whom Leovitius the astrologer brings in for an example and instance of certainty in his art; who because he had the significators in his birth fortunate, and free from the hostile aspects of Saturn and Mars, being a very cold man, "could not remember that ever he was sick." Paracelsus may brag that he could make a man live 400 years or more, if he might bring him up from his infancy, and diet him as he lists; and some physicians hold, that there is no certain period of man's life; but it may still by temperance and physic be prolonged. We find in the meantime, by common experience, that no man can escape, but that of Hesiod is true:
The earth's full of maladies, and full the sea, Which set upon us both by night and day.
Division of Diseases.
If you require a more exact division of these ordinary diseases which are incident to men, I refer you to physicians; they will tell you of acute and chronic, first and secondary, lethals, salutares, errant, fixed, simple, compound, connected, or consequent, belonging to parts or the whole, in habit, or in disposition, and more. My division at this time, as most befitting my purpose, shall be into those of the body and mind. For them of the body, a brief catalog of which Fuschius hath made, Institut, book 3, section one, chapter 11. I refer you to the voluminous tomes of Galen, Areteus, Rhasis, Avicenna, Alexander, Paulus Aetius, Gordonerius: and those exact Neoterics, Savanarola, Capivaccius, Donatus Altomarus, Hercules de Saxonia, Mercurialis, Victorius Faventinus, Wecker, Piso, and more, that have methodically and elaborately written of them all. Those of the mind and head I will briefly handle, and apart.
Subsection Three. Division of the Diseases of the Head.
These diseases of the mind, forasmuch as they have their chief seat and organs in the head, which are commonly repeated amongst the diseases of the head which are diverse, and vary much according to their site. For in the head, as there be several parts, so there be diverse grievances, which according to that division of Heurnius, which he takes out of Arculanus, are inward or outward, to omit all others which pertain to eyes and ears, nostrils, gums, teeth, mouth, palate, tongue, weezle, chops, face, and others, belonging properly to the brain, as baldness, falling of hair, fur, lice, and more. Inward belonging to the skins next to the brain, called dura and pia mater, as all headaches, and else, or to the ventricles, stems, kells, tunicles, creeks, and parts of it, and their passions, as caro, vertigo, nightmare, apoplexy, falling sickness. The diseases of the nerves, cramps, stupor, convulsion, tremor, palsy: or belonging to the excrements of the brain, catarrhs, sneezing, rheums, distillations: or else those that pertain to the substance of the brain itself, in which they are conceived frenzy, lethargy, melancholy, madness, weak memory, drowsiness, or Coma Vigilia and vigil Coma. Out of these again I will single such as properly belong to the fantasy, or imagination, or reason itself, which Laurentius calls the disease of the mind; and Hildesheim, diseases of the imagination, or of injured reason, which are three or four in number, frenzy, madness, melancholy, dotage, and their kinds: as hydrophobia, lycanthropia, chorus of the holy vine, demonic diseases, Saint Vitus's dance, possession of devils, which I will briefly touch and point at, insisting especially in this of melancholy, as more eminent than the rest, and that through all his kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics, cures: as Lonicerus hath done about apoplexy, and many other of such particular diseases. Not that I find fault with those who have written of this subject before, as Jason Pratensis, Laurentius, Montaltus, Thomas Bright, and others, they have done very well in their several kinds and methods; yet that which one omits, another may haply see; that which one contracts, another may enlarge. To conclude with Scribanius, “that which they had neglected, or perfunctorily handled, we may more thoroughly examine; that which is obscurely delivered in them, may be perspicuously dilated and amplified by us:” and so made more familiar and easy for every man's capacity, and the common good, which is the chief end of my discourse.
Subsection Four. Dotage, Frenzy, Madness, Hydrophobia, Lycanthropia, Chorus sancti Viti, Extasis.
Delirium, Dotage.
Dotage, fatuity, or folly, is a common name to all the following species, as some will have it. Laurentius and Altomarus comprehended madness, melancholy, and the rest under this name, and call it the highest genus of them all. If it be distinguished from them, it is natural or congenital, which comes by some defect of the organs, and too much brain, as we see in our common fools; and it is for the most part intended or remitted in particular men, and thereupon some are wiser than others: or else it is acquired, an appendix or symptom of some other disease, which comes or goes; or if it continues, a sign of melancholy itself. Frenzy.
Phrenitis, which the Greeks derive from the word other-wise, is a disease of the mind, with a continual madness or dotage, which hath an acute fever annexed, or else an inflammation of the brain, or the membranes or cells of it, with an acute fever, which causes madness and dotage. It differs from melancholy and madness, because their dotage is without an illness: this continual, with waking, or memory decayed, and more. Melancholy is most part silent, this clamorous; and many such like differences are assigned by physicians.
Madness. Madness, frenzy, and melancholy are confounded by Celsus, and many writers; others leave out frenzy, and make madness and melancholy but one disease, which Jason Pratensis especially labors, and that they differ only a second greater or less, in quantity alone, the one being a degree to the other, and both proceeding from one reason They differ in intensity and remiss degree, says Gordonius, as the humor is intended or remitted. Of the same mind is Areteus, Alexander Tertullianus, Guianerius, Savanarola, Heurnius; and Galen himself writes promiscuously of them both by reason of their affinity: but most of our neoterics do handle them apart, whom I will follow in this treatise. Madness is therefore defined to be a violent endowment; or raving without a fever, far more violent than melancholy, full of anger and clamor, horrible looks, actions, gestures, troubling the patients with far greater vehemency both of body and mind, without all fear and sorrow, with such impetuous force and boldness, that sometimes three or four men cannot hold them. Differing only in this from frenzy, that it is without a fever, and their memory is most part better. It hath the same causes as the other, as choler adust, and blood incensed, brains inflamed, and more. Fracastorius adds, "a due time, and full age" to this definition, to distinguish it from children, and will have it confirmed impotence, to separate it from such as accidentally come and go again, as by taking henbane, nightshade, wine, and more. Of this fury there be different kinds; ecstasy, which is familiar with some persons, as Cardan says of himself, he could be in one when he lists; in which the Indian priests deliver their oracles, and the witches in Lapland, as Olaus Magnus writesth, Book 3, chapter 18. To predict all ecstasy, answer all questions in an ecstasy you will ask; what your friends do, where they are, how they fare, and more. The other species of this fury are enthusiasms, revelations, and visions, so often mentioned by Gregory and Beda in their works; obsession or possession of devils, sibylline prophets, and poetical furies; such as come by eating noxious herbs, tarantulas stinging, and others, which some reduce to this. The most known are these, lycanthropy, hydrophobia, the chorus of the holy vine.
Lycanthropia.
Lycanthropia, which Avicenna calls cucubuth, others wolf-madness, or wolf-madness, when men run howling about graves and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves, or some such beasts. Aetius and Paulus call it a kind of melancholy; but I should rather refer it to madness, as most do. Some make a doubt of it whether there be any such disease. Donat ab Altomari says, that he saw two of them in his time: Wierus tells a story of such a one at Padua in 1541, that would not believe to the contrary, but that he was a wolf. He hath another instance of a Spaniard, who thought himself a bear; Forrestus confirms as much by many examples; one amongst the rest of which he was an eyewitness, at Alcmaer in Holland, a poor husbandman that still hunted about graves, and kept in churchyards, of a pale, black, ugly, and fearful look. Such belike, or little better, were king Praetus' daughters, that thought themselves kine. And Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel, as some interpreters hold, was only troubled with this kind of madness. This disease perhaps gave occasion to that bold assertion of Pliny, "some men were turned into wolves in his time, and from wolves to men again:" and to that fable of Pausanias, of a man that was ten years a wolf, and afterwards turned to his former shape: to Ovid's tale of Lycaon, and more. He that is desirous to hear of this disease, or more examples, let him read Austin in his eighteenth book on the City of God, chapter 5. Mizaldus, centenial 5, 77, Sckenkius, book one, Hildesheim, Talk two of Mania. Forrestus book 10 of diseases of the brain and others. This malady, says Avicenna, troubles men most in February, and is nowadays frequent in Bohemia and Hungary, according to Heurnius. Scheretzius will have it common in Livonia. They lie hid most part all day, and go abroad in the night, barking, howling, at graves and deserts; “they have usually hollow eyes, scabbed legs and thighs, very dry and pale,” said Altomarus; he gives a reason there of all the symptoms, and sets down a brief cure of them.
Hydrophobia is a kind of madness, well known in every village, which comes by the biting of a mad dog, or scratching, says Aurelianus; touching, or smelling alone sometimes as Sckenkius proves, and is incident to many other creatures as well as men: so called because the parties affected cannot endure the sight of water, or any liquor, supposing still they see a mad dog in it. And which is more wonderful; though they be very dry, as in this malady they are, they will rather die than drink: about Venenis Caelius Aurelianus, an ancient writer, makes a doubt whether this Hydrophobia be a passion of the body or the mind. The part affected is the brain: the cause, poison that comes from the mad dog, which is so hot and dry, that it consumes all the moisture in the body. Francisci Hildesheim relates of some that died so mad; and being cut up, had no water, scarce blood, or any moisture left in them. To such as are so affected, the fear of water begins at fourteen days after they are bitten, to some again not till forty or sixty days after: commonly saith Heurnius, they begin to rave, fly water and glasses, to look red, and swell in the face, about twenty days after, if some remedy be not taken in the meantime, to lie awake, to be pensive, sad, to see strange visions, to bark and howl, to fall into a swoon, and oftentimes fits of the falling sickness Some say, little things like whelps will be seen in their urine. If any of these signs appear, they are past recovery. Many times these symptoms will not appear until six or seven months after, says Codronchus; and sometimes not till seven or eight years, as Guianerius; twelve as Albertus; six or eight months after, as Galen holds. Baldus the great lawyer died of it: an Augustine friar, and a woman in Delft, that were Forrestus' patients, were miserably consumed with it. The common cure in the country, for such at least as dwell near the seaside, is to duck them over head and ears in sea water; some use charms: every good wife can prescribe medicines. But the best cure to be had in such cases, is from the most approved physicians; they that will read of them, may consult with Dioscorides, book six c 37, Heurnius, Hildesheim, Capivaccius, Forrestus, Sckenkius and before all others Codronchus an Italian, who hath lately written two exquisite books on the subject.
Chorus sancti Viti, or The Saint vine's dance; the lascivious dance, Paracelsus calls it, because they that are taken from it, can do nothing but dance till they be dead, or cured. It is so called, for that the parties so troubled were wont to go to Saint Vitus for help, and after they had danced there a while, they were certainly freed. Tis strange to hear how long they will dance, and in what manner, over stools, forms, tables; even great bellied women sometimes, and yet never hurt their children, will dance so long that they can stir neither hand nor foot, but seem to be quite dead. One in red clothes they cannot abide. Music above all things they love, and therefore the magistrates in Germany will hire musicians to play to them, and some lusty sturdy companions to dance with them. This disease hath been very common in Germany, as appears by those relations of Sckenkius, and Paracelsus in his book of Madness, who brags how many several persons he hath cured of it. Felix Platerus, alienatio mentis, chapter 3, reports of a woman in Basil whom he saw, that danced a whole month together. The Arabians call it a kind of palsy. Bodine, known as Jean Bodin, in his fifth book of Republic chapter 1, speaks of this infirmity; Monavius in his last epistle to Scoltizius, and in another to Dudithus, where you may read more of it. The last kind of madness or melancholy, is that demoniacal, if I may so call it, obsession or possession of devils, which Platerus and others would have to be preternatural: stupendous things are said of them, their actions, gestures, contortions, fasting, prophesying, speaking languages they were never taught, and more. Many strange stories are related of them, which because some will not allow, for Deacon and Darrel have written large volumes on this subject pro and con. I voluntarily omit. Fuschius, Institution book 3, section one chapter 11, Felix Plater, Laurentius, add to these another fury that proceeds from love, and another from study, another divine or religious fury; but these more properly belong to melancholy; of all which I will speak apart, intending to write a whole book of them.
Subsection Five.
Melancholy in Disposition, improperly so called, Equivocations.
Melancholy, the subject of our present discourse, is either in disposition or habit. In disposition, it is that transitory melancholy which goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or disturbance of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causes anguish, dullness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing frowardness in us, or a dislike. In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy that is dull, sad, sour, lumpish, ill disposed, solitary, any way moved, or displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions, no man living is free, no stoic, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself; so well composed, but more or less, some time or other he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of mortality. "Man that is born of a woman, is of short continuance, and full of trouble." Zeno, Cato, Socrates himself, whom Aelian so highly commends for a moderate temper, that "nothing could disturb him, but going out, and coming in, still Socrates kept the same serenity of countenance, whatever misery soever befell him, if we may believe Plato his disciple, was much tormented with it. Quintus Metellus, in whom Valerius gives instance of all happiness, "the most fortunate man then living, born in that most flourishing city of Rome, of noble parentage, a proper man of person, well qualified, healthy, rich, honorable, a senator, a consul, happy in his wife, happy in his children," and more. yet this man was not void of melancholy, he had his share of sorrow. Polycrates Samius, who flung his ring into the sea, because he would participate in discontent with others, and had it miraculously restored to him again shortly after, by a fish taken as he angled, was not free from melancholy dispositions. No man can take care of himself; the very gods had bitter pangs, and frequent passions, as their own poets put upon them. In general, “as the heaven, so is our life, sometimes fair, sometimes overcast, tempestuous, and serene; as in a rose, flowers and prickles; in the year itself, a temperate summer sometimes, a hard winter, a drought, and then again pleasant showers: so is our life intermixed with joys, hopes, fears, sorrows, calumnies: pain and pleasure follow in turn," there is a succession of pleasure and pain.
In the middle of the spring of the hares,
Something to be loved rises up, it gnaws at the very flowers.
"Even in the midst of laughing there is sorrow," as Solomon holds): even in the midst of all our feasting and jollity, as Austin infers in his Com. on the forty-first Psalm, there is grief and discontent. Among the delicacies something savage always strangles us, for a pint of honey thou shalt here likely find a gallon of gall, for a dram of pleasure a pound of pain, for an inch of mirth an ell of moan; as ivy doth an oak, these miseries encompass our life. And it is most absurd and ridiculous for any mortal man to look for a perpetual tenure of happiness in his life. Nothing so prosperous and pleasant, but it hath some bitterness in it, some complaining, some grudging; it is all bitter-sweet glycypicron, a mixed passion, and like a checker table black and white: men, families, cities, have their falls and wanes; now trines, sextiles, then quartiles and oppositions. We are not here as those angels, celestial powers and bodies, sun and moon, to finish our course without all offense, with such constancy, to continue for so many ages: but subject to infirmities, miseries, interrupted, tossed and tumbled up and down, carried about with every small blast, often molested and disquieted upon each slender occasion, uncertain, brittle, and so is all that we trust unto. "And he that knows not this is not armed to endure it, is not fit to live in this world, as one condoles our time, he knows not the condition of it, where with a reciprocity, pleasure and pain are still united, and succeed one another in a ring." Get out of the world, get thee gone hence if thou canst not brook it; there is no way to avoid it, but to arm thyself with patience, with magnanimity, to oppose thyself unto it, to suffer affliction as a good soldier of Christ; as Paul adviseth constantly to bear it. But forasmuch as so few can embrace this good council of his, or use it aright, but rather as so many brute beasts give away to their passion, voluntary subject and precipitate themselves into a labyrinth of cares, woes, miseries, and suffer their souls to be overcome by them, cannot arm themselves with that patience as they ought to do, it falleth out oftentimes that these dispositions become habits, and "many affects contemned", as Seneca notes, "make a disease. Even as one distillation, not yet grown to custom, makes a cough; but continual and inveterate causeth a consumption of the lungs; so do these our melancholy provocations: and according as the humor itself is intended, or remitted in men, as their temperature of body, or rational soul is better able to make resistance; so are they more or less affected. For that which is but a flea-biting to one, causes intolerable torment to another; and which one by his singular moderation, and well-composed carriage can happily overcome, a second is no whit able to sustain, but upon every small occasion of misconceived abuse, injury, grief, disgrace, loss, cross, humor, and more, if solitary, or idle, yields so far to passion, that his complexion is altered, his digestion hindered, his sleep gone, his spirits obscured, and his heart heavy, his hypochondria misaffected; wind, crudity, on a sudden overtake him, and he himself overcomes with melancholy. As it is with a man imprisoned for debt, if once in the gaol, every creditor will bring his action against him, and there likely hold him. If any discontent seize upon a patient, in an instant all other perturbations, for-what data the gate rushes, will set upon him, and then like a lame dog or broken-winged goose he droops and pines away, and is brought at last to that ill habit or malady of melancholy itself. So that as the philosophers make eight degrees of heat and cold, we may make eighty-eight of melancholy, as the parts affected are variously seized with it, or have been plunged more or less into this infernal gulf, or waded deeper into it But all these melancholy fits, however pleasing at first, or displeasing, violent and tyrannizing over those whom they seize on for the time; yet these fits I say, or men affected, are but improperly so called, because they continue not, but come and go, as by some objects they aye moved. This melancholy of which we are to treat, is a habit, mosbus sonticus, or chronicus, a chronic or continuous disease, a settled humor, as Aurelianus and others call it, not errant, but fixed; and as it was long increasing, so now being, pleasant, or painful, grown to an habit, it will hardly be removed.
SECTION One. MEMBER Two.
SUBSECTION. Digression of Anatomy.
Before I proceed to define the disease of melancholy, what it is, or to discourse further of it, I hold it not impertinent to make a brief digression of the anatomy of the body and faculties of the soul, for the better understanding of that which is to follow; because many hard words will often occur, as mirach, hypocondries, emeralds, and more, imagination, reason, humors, spirits, vital, natural, animal, nerves, veins, arteries, chylus, phlegm; which by the vulgar will not so easily be perceived, what they are, how cited, and to what end they serve. And besides, it may peradventure give occasion to some men to examine more accurately, search further into this most excellent subject, and thereupon with that royal prophet to praise God, "for a man is fearfully and wonderfully made, and curiously wrought", that have time and leisure enough, and are sufficiently informed in all other worldly businesses, as to make a good bargain, buy and sell, to keep and make choice of a fair hawk, hound, horse, and others. But for such matters as concern the knowledge of themselves, they are wholly ignorant and careless; they know not what this body and soul are, how combined, of what parts and faculties they consist, or how a man differs from a dog. And what can be more ignominious and filthy, as Melancthon well inveighs, "than for a man not to know the structure and composition of his own body, especially since the knowledge of it tends so much to the preservation, of his health, and information of his manners?” To stir them up therefore to this study, to peruse those elaborate works of Galen, Bauhines, Plater, Vesalius, Falopius, Laurentius, Remelinus, and others, which have written copiously in Latin; or that which some of our industrious countrymen have done in our mother tongue, not long since, as that translation of Columbus and Microcosmographia, in thirteen books, I have made this brief digression. Also because Wecker, Melancthon, Fernelius, Fuschius, and those tedious Tracts on the Soul, which have more compendiously handled and written of this matter, are not at all times ready to be had, to give them some small taste, or notice of the rest, let this epitome suffice.
Subsection Two. Division of the Body, Humours, Spirits.
Of the parts of the body there may be many divisions: the most approved is that of Laurentius, out of Hippocrates: which is, into parts contained, or containing. Contained, are either humors or spirits.
Humours.
A humor is a liquid or fluent part of the body, comprehended in it, for the preservation of it; and is either innate or born with us, or adventitious and acquired. The radical or innate, is daily supplied by nourishment, which some call cambium, and make those secondary humors of dew and gluten to maintain it: or acquisite, to maintain these four first primary humors, coming and proceeding from the first concoction in the liver, by which means chylus is excluded. Some divide them into profitable and excrementitious. But Crato out of Hippocrates will have all four to be juice, and not excrements, without which no living creature can be sustained: which four, though they be comprehended in the mass of blood, yet they have their several affections, by which they are distinguished from one another, and from those adventitious, sinful, or diseased humours, as Melanchthon calls them.
Blood.
Blood is a hot, sweet, temperate, red humor, prepared in the mesaraic veins, and made of the most temperate parts of the chylus in the liver, whose office is to nourish the whole body, to give it strength and color, being dispersed by the veins through every part of it. And from it spirits are first begotten in the heart, which afterwards by the arteries are communicated to the other parts.
Pituita, or phlegm, is a cold and moist humour, begotten of the colder part of the chylus, or white juice coming out of the meat digested in the stomach, in the liver; his office is to nourish and moisten the members of the body, which as the tongue are moved, that they be not over dry.
Choler, is hot and dry, bitter, begotten of the hotter parts of the chylus, and gathered to the gall: it helps the natural heat and senses, and serves to the expelling of excrements.
Melancholy.
Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black, and sour, begotten of the more starchy part of nourishment, and purged from the spleen, is a bridle to the other two hot humors, blood and choler, preserving them in the blood, and nourishing the bones. These four humors have some analogy with the four elements, and to the four ages in man.
Serum, Sweat, Tears.
To these humors you may add serum, which is the matter of urine, and those excrementitious humors of the third concoction, sweat and tears.
Spirits.
Spirit is a most subtle vapour, which is expressed from the blood, and the instrument of the soul, to perform all his actions; a common tie or medium between the body and the soul, as some will have it; or as Paracelsus, a fourth soul of himself. Melanchthon holds the fountain of those spirits to be the heart, begotten there; and afterwards conveyed to the brain, they take another nature to them. Of these spirits there be three kinds, according to the three principal parts, brain, heart, liver; natural, vital, animal The natural are begotten in the liver, and then dispersed through the veins, to perform those natural actions. The vital spirits are made in the heart of the natural, which by the arteries are transported to all the other parts: if the spirits cease, then life ceases, as in a syncope or swooning. The animal spirits formed of the vital, brought up to the brain, and diffused by the nerves, to the subordinate members, give sense and motion to them all.
Subsection three. Similar parts.
Similar Parts.
Containing parts, by reason of their more solid substance, are either homogeneous or heterogeneous, similar or dissimilar; so Aristotle divides them, Book One, chapter 1, of History of Animals; Laurentius, chapter 20, Book one. Similar, or homogeneous, are such as, if they be divided, are still severed into parts of the same nature, as water into water. Of these some be spermatical, some fleshy or carnal. Spermatical are such as are immediately begotten of the seed, which are bones, gristles, ligaments, membranes, nerves, arteries, veins, skins, fibers or strings, fat.
Bones.
The bones are dry and hard, begotten of the thickest of the seed, to strengthen and sustain other parts: some say there be 304, some 307, or 313 in a man's body. They have no nerves in them, and are therefore without sense. A gristle is a substance softer than bone, and harder than the rest, flexible, and serves to maintain the parts of motion. Ligaments are they that tie the bones together, and other parts to the bones, with their subserving tendons: membranes' office is to cover the rest. Nerves, or sinews, are without membranes, and full of marrow within; they proceed from the brain, and carry the animal spirits for sense and motion. Of these some be harder, some softer; the softer serve the senses, and there be seven pairs of them. The first be the optic nerves, by which we see; the second move the eyes; the third pair serve for the tongue to taste; the fourth pair for the taste in the palate; the fifth belong to the ears; the sixth pair is most ample, and runs almost over all the bowels; the seventh pair moves the tongue. The harder sinews serve for the motion of the inner parts, proceeding from the marrow in the back, of whom there be thirty combinations, seven of the neck, twelve of the breast, and more.
Arteries.
Arteries are long and hollow, with a double skin to convey the vital spirit; to discern which is the better, they say that Vesalius the anatomist was wont to cut up men alive. They arise in the left side of the heart, and are principally two, from which the rest are derived, the aorta and the venosus: the aorta is the root of all the others, which serve the whole body; the other goes to the lungs, to fetch air to cool the heart.
Veins.
Veins are hollow and round, like pipes, rising from the liver, carrying blood and natural spirits; they feed all the parts. Of these there be two chief, Vena porta and Vena cava, from which the rest are corrivated. That Vena porta is a vein coming from the concave of the liver, and receiving those mesaraical veins, by whom he takes the chylus from the stomach and guts, and conveys it to the liver. The other derives blood from the liver to nourish all the other dispersed members. The branches of that Vena porta are the mesaraical and haemorrhoids. The branches of the cavity are inward or outward. Inward, seminal or emulsifying. Outward, in the head, arms, feet, and more, and have several names.
Fibers, Fat, Flesh.
Fibers are strings, white and solid, dispersed through the whole member, and right, oblique, transverse, all which have their several uses. Fat is a similar part, moist, without blood, composed of the most thick and unctuous matter of the blood. The skin covers the rest, and hath a cuticle, or a little skin under it. Flesh is soft and ruddy, composed of the congealing of blood, and more.
Subsection four. Dissimilar Parts.
Dissimilar parts are those which we call organic, or instrumental, and they be inward or outward. The chiefest outward parts are situated forward or backward: forward, the crown and foretop of the head, skull, face, forehead, temples, chin, eyes, ears, nose, and more, neck, breast, chest, upper and lower part of the belly, hypochondrium, navel, groin, flank, and others; backward, the hinder part of the head, back, shoulders, sides, loins, hipbones, os sacrum, buttocks, and else. Or joints, arms, hands, feet, legs, thighs, knees, and more. Or common to both, which, because they are obvious and well known, I have carelessly repeated, and only those principal and greater; that he who wills may take the rest from the books on the soul. Inward organic parts, which cannot be seen, are diverse in number, and have several names, functions, and divisions; but that of Laurentius is most notable, into noble or ignoble parts. Of the noble there be three principal parts, to which all the rest belong, and whom they serve, brain, heart, liver; according to whose site, three regions, or a threefold division, is made of the whole body. As first of the head, in which the animal organs are contained, and brain itself, which by its nerves give sense and motion to the rest, and is, as it were, a privy counselor and chancellor to the heart. The second region is the chest, or middle belly, in which the heart as king keeps his court, and by his arteries communicates life to the whole body. The third region is the lower belly, in which the liver resides as a legate on the side, with the rest of those natural organs, serving for concoction, nourishment, expelling of excrements. This lower region is distinguished from the upper by the midriff, or diaphragm, and is subdivided again by some into three concavities or regions, upper, middle, and lower. The upper of the hypochondrium, in whose right side is the liver, the left the spleen; from which it is denominated hypochondriacal melancholy. The second of the navel and flanks, divided from the first by the rim. The last of the water course, which is again subdivided into three other parts. The Arabians make two parts of this region, Epigastrium and Hypogastrium, upper or lower. Epigastrium they call Mirach, from whence comes Mirachialis Melancholia, sometimes mentioned of them. Of these several regions I will treat in brief apart; and first of the third region, in which the natural organs are contained.
De Anima. The Lower Region, Natural Organs.
But you that are readers in the meantime, "Suppose you were now brought into some sacred temple, or majestical palace", as Melancthon says, "to behold not the matter only, but the singular art, workmanship, and counsel of this our great Creator. And it is a pleasant and profitable speculation, if it be considered aright." The parts of this region, which present themselves to your consideration and view, are such as serve to nutrition or generation. Those of nutrition serve to the first or second concoction; as the esophagus or gullet, which brings meat and drink into the stomach. The ventricle or stomach, which is seated in the midst of that part of the belly beneath the midriff, the kitchen, as it were, of the first concoction, and which turns our meat into chylus. It hath two mouths, one above, another beneath. The upper is sometimes taken for the stomach itself; the lower and nether door, as Wecker calls it, is named Pylorus. This stomach is sustained by a large kell or caul, called the omentum; which some will have the same with peritoneum, or rim of the belly. From the stomach to the very foundation are produced the guts, or intestines, which serve a little to another and distribute the chylus, and convey away the excrements. They are divided into small and great, by reason of their site and substance, slender or thicker: the slender is duodenum, or whole gut, which is next to the stomach, some twelve inches long, says Fuschius. The jejunum, or empty gut, continues to the other, which has many mesaraic veins annexed to it, which take part of the chylus to the liver from it. Ilium the third, which consists of many crinkles, which serves with the rest to receive, keep, and distribute the chylus from the stomach. The thick guts are three, the blind gut, colon, and right gut. The blind is a thick and short gut, having one mouth, in which the ileum and colon meet: it receives the excrements, and conveys them to the colon. This colon hath many windings, that the excrements pass not away too fast: the right gut is straight, and conveys the excrements to the fundament, whose lower part is bound up with certain muscles called sphincters, that the excrements may be the better contained, until such time as a man be willing to go to the stool. In the midst of these guts is situated the mesenterium or midriff, composed of many veins, arteries, and much fat, serving chiefly to sustain the guts. All these parts serve the first concoction. To the second, which is busy either in refining the good nourishment or expelling the bad, is chiefly belonging to the liver, like in color to congealed blood, the shop of blood, situated in the right hypochondria, in figure like to a half-moon, a generous member Melancthon styles it, a generous part; it serves to turn the chylus into blood, for the nourishment of the body. The excrements of it are either choleric or watery, which the other subordinate parts convey. The gall placed in the concave of the liver, extracts choler to it: the spleen, melancholy; which is situated on the left side, over against the liver, a spongy matter, that draws this black choler to it by a secret virtue, and feeds upon it, conveying the rest to the bottom of the stomach, to stir up appetite, or else to the guts as an excrement. That watery matter the two kidneys expurgate by those emulgent veins and ureters. The emulgent draws this superfluous moisture from the blood; the two ureters convey it to the bladder, which, by reason of its site in the lower belly, is apt to receive it, having two parts, neck and bottom: the bottom holds the water, the neck is constricted with a muscle, which, as a porter, keeps the water from running out against our will. Members of generation are common to both sexes, or peculiar to one; which, because they are impertinent to my purpose, I do voluntarily omit.
Middle Region.
Next in order is the middle region, or chest, which includes the vital faculties and parts; which, as I have said, is separated from the lower belly by the diaphragm or midriff, which is a skin consisting of many nerves, membranes; and among other uses it hath, is the instrument of laughing. There is also a certain thin membrane, full of sinews, which covers the whole chest within, and is called pleura, the seat of the disease called pleurisy, when it is inflamed; some add a third skin, which is termed mediastinus, which divides the chest into two parts, right and left; of this region the principal part is the heart, which is the seat and fountain of life, of heat, of spirits, of pulse and respiration, the sun of our body, the king and sole commander of it, the seat and organ of all passions and affections The first living, the last dying, it lives first, dies last in all creatures. Of a pyramidical form, and not much unlike a pineapple; a part worthy of admiration, that can yield such variety of affections, by whose motion it is dilated or contracted, to stir and command the humors in the body. As in sorrow, melancholy; in anger, choler; in joy, to send the blood outwardly; in sorrow, to call it in; moving the humours, as horses do a chariot. This heart, though it be one sole member, yet it may be divided into two creeks right and left. The right is like the moon increasing, bigger than the other part, and receives blood from the vena cava, distributing some of it to the lungs to nourish them; the rest to the left side, to engender spirits. The left creek hath the form of a cone, and is the seat of life, which, as a torch doth oil, draws blood unto it, begetting of it spirits and fire; and as fire in a torch, so are spirits in the blood; and by that great artery called aorta, it sends vital spirits over the body, and takes air from the lungs by that artery which is called venosa; so that both creeks have their vessels, the right two veins, the left two arteries, besides those two common anfractuous ears, which serve them both; the one to hold blood, the other air, for several uses. The lungs is a thin spongy part, like an ox's hoof, saith Fernelius, the town-clerk or crier, one terms it, the instrument of voice, as an orator to a king; annexed to the heart, to express their thoughts by voice. That it is the instrument of voice, is manifest, in that no creature can speak, or utter any voice, which wants these lights. It is, besides, the instrument of respiration, or breathing; and its office is to cool the heart, by sending air unto it, by the venous artery, which vein comes to the lungs by that rough artery which consists of many gristles, membranes, nerves, taking in air at the nose and mouth, and by it likewise exhales the fumes of the heart.
In the upper region serving the animal faculties, the chief organ is the brain, which is a soft, marrowish, and white substance, engendered of the purest part of seed and spirits, included by many skins, and seated within the skull or brain pan ; and it is the most noble organ under heaven, the dwelling-house and seat of the soul, the habitation of wisdom, memory, judgment, reason, and in which man is most like unto God; and therefore nature hath covered it with a skull of hard bone, and two skins or membranes, of which the one is called dura mater, or meninx, the other pia mater. The dura mater is next to the skull, above the other, which includes and protects the brain. When this is taken away, the pious mother is to be seen, a thin membrane, the next and immediate cover of the brain, and not covering only, but entering into it. The brain itself is divided into two parts, the fore and hinder part; the fore part is much bigger than the other, which is called the little brain in respect of it. This fore part hath many concavities distinguished by certain ventricles, which are the receptacles of the spirits, brought hither by the arteries from the heart, and are there refined to a more heavenly nature, to perform the actions of the soul. Of these ventricles there are three, right, left, and middle. The right and left answer to their site, and beg animal spirits; if they be in any way hurt, sense and motion cease. These ventricles, moreover, are held to be the seat of the common sense. The middle ventricle is a common concourse and cavity of them both, and hath two passages, the one to receive pus, and the other extends itself to the fourth creek; in this they place imagination and thought, and so the three ventricles of the fore part of the brain are used. The fourth creek behind the head is common to the cerebellum or little brain, and marrow of the backbone, the last and most solid of all the rest, which receives the animal spirits from the other ventricles, and conveys them to the marrow in the back, and is the place where they say the memory is seated.
Subsection five. Of the Soul and her Faculties.
According to Aristotle, the soul is defined to be entelekheia, thorough or complete, the perfection or first act of an organic body, having power of life, which most philosophers approve. But many doubts arise about the essence, subject, seat, distinction, and subordinate faculties of it. For the essence and particular knowledge, of all other things it is most hard, be it of man or beast, to discern, as Aristotle himself, Tully, Picus Mirandula, Tolet, and other neoteric philosophers confess: "We can understand all things by her, but what she is we cannot apprehend." Some therefore make one soul, divided into three principal faculties; others, three distinct souls. Which question of late hath been much controverted by Picolomineus and Zabarel. Paracelsus will have four souls, adding to the three grand faculties a spiritual soul: which opinion of his, Campanella, in his book de sensu rerum much labors to demonstrate and prove, because carcasses bleed at the sight of the murder; with many such arguments And some again, one soul of all creatures whatever, differing only in organs; and that beasts have reason as well as men, though, for some defect of organs, not in such measure. Others make a doubt whether it be all in all, and all in every part; which is amply discussed in Zabarel among the rest. The common division of the soul is into three principal faculties, vegetal, sensitive, and rational, which make three distinct kinds of living creatures, vegetable plants, sensible beasts, rational men. How these three principal faculties are distinguished and connected, seems inaccessible to human ingenuity, is beyond human capacity, as Taurellus, Philip, Flavins, and others suppose. The inferior may be alone, but the superior cannot subsist without the other; so you sensibly include both the vegetal and the rational; which are contained in it, saith Aristotle, as a triangle in a quadrangle.
Vegetal Soul.
Vegetal, the first of the three distinct faculties, is defined to be "a substantial act of an organic body, by which it is nourished, augmented, and begets another like unto itself." In which definition, three several operations are specified, altrix, auctrix, procreator; the first is nutrition, whose object is nourishment, meat, drink, and the like; this organ is the liver in sensible creatures; in plants, the root or sap. His office is to turn the nutriment into the substance of the nourished body, which he performs by natural heat. This nutritive operation hath four other subordinate functions or powers belonging to it, attraction, retention, digestion, expulsion.
Attraction.
Attraction is a ministering faculty, which, as a loadstone doth iron, draws meat into the stomach, or as a lamp doth oil; and this attractive power is very necessary in plants, which suck up moisture by the root, as, another mouth, into the sap, as a like stomach.
Retention.
Retention keeps it, being attracted unto the stomach, until such time it be concocted; for if it should pass away straight, the body could not be nourished.
Digestion.
Digestion is performed by natural
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