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the blood in these persons must needs be sparing, and therefore the lesser chyle may ferment it; especially considering, that their fermentations are but small, as appears by the smallness of their heat; and, therefore, pray do yourself the right not to expect an account of robust ones.

Seventhly, The heart itself contributes much to the fermentation. It is acknowledged by all, that the circulation of the blood, being a rapid motion through the indefatigable pulsation of the heart, adds much to the fermentation. We see that motion given to wine, ale, cyder, or cream of milk, though sufficiently fermented, will yet, without a new ferment, give a new fermentation. But, sir, lest you should mistake me, when I stumbled at an innate ferment in the heart, and yet stood upon it, that fermentation may be ascribed thereto, let me unbosom myself, that you may see what the heart contributes thereunto. First, The heart is as it were a cistern, into which the blood veins, milky veins, and water veins, or lymphæducts, by mutual consent, deposit their multiform juices. Secondly, It hath the force of a mill, by its quaquaverse fibres, continually busied in their constrictions and dilatations to grind and make small the more crassy particles of the juices. Thirdly, Of a mortar, wherein the more exact mixture of these different juices is highly promoted. Fourthly, Of a gin, expelling the blood sufficiently subacted, and then, to the further execution of its offices, but too too troublesome; and, by the way, the burden of the blood may be one cause of its pulsation; for it is said, if a live heart be taken out of the body, the prick of a pin will renew its pulsation. Fifthly, Of a pump to give motion, and, according to the sanguiterious ducts, to the several parts, distribution of this juice adapted to nutrition.* Sixthly, Of a loom, wherein the blood is fermented. Seventhly, Of a kind of philoso phical furnace, wherein a spiritual Biolychnium is kindled; I intend only a heat perchance, caused only by the motion and fermentation aforesaid. Eighthly, Of a Pelican, to rarefy and exalt the vital spirits. Ninthly, Of an alembick, not vulgar, whereby the spirits receive a kind of separation, though yet they run with the blood, which being condensed in the refrigeratory of the habit of the body, as the learned Walæus expresseth it, are the more easily subject to the brain's philtration, and the nerves preservation. Tenthly, Of a potential philtre, whereby there is made such a segregation of homogeneous particles into their proper classes, as renders the blood much more obedient to the colatures and emunctories of the body; as rennet in the milk potentially separates the whey, and prepares it for an actual separation by the sieve; and, in chymical preparations, the acid liquor, or diluting a large quantity of weakening water, provokes a kind of fermentation, whereby the suspended atoms, in the strong menstruums, are precipitated, and so prepared for a more facile separation; so that, indeed, all the engines, in nature's shop, depend mainly upon

*Walæus in Meth. Medend.

the right tone, texture, and operation of the heart. From which it seems apparent to me, which yet I submit to clearer minds, that the heart is further serviceable to fermentation, and other offices of nature, than, meerly pump-like, to conciliate motion; which may be further confirmed, by the site of the heart in the center of the body; as also, by its firmest muniments, by which it is garisoned on its back by the spine, on its face by the sternum, on its sides by the ribs, under its feet by the diaphragm, and over its head by the canopy of the pyramidal thorax, and, lastly, by its buff-coat, the pericardium; and, which is not nothing, the curious fabrick, with various camerations, the retiform fibres, and various passages, the uniform procedure of nature, in the formation of the hearts of animals, whilst often it sports itself in the building of other parts, and its primogeniture, as appears by the Vesicula palpitans first formed in eggs, according to the renowned Harvey, the rudiment of the heart, and the blood's constant flux and reflux to and from the heart, even then when the liver and lungs, though famous bowels, are passed by unsaluted in the circulation of embryo's; as also nature's great care to supply the defective passages of those viscera by a foramen ovale in the septum of the heart, lest the intercourse of the blood. with the heart should be impeded; which hole is yet afterwards precluded, when the infant is midwived into a new world. Much of this curiosity of nature, about the heart, seems utterly unnecessary, if it served only for motion; but we are sure that God and nature does nothing frustraneously. Neither am I yet satisfied, that the whole of the blood's motion is to be ascribed to the heart's pulsation; for Conringius affirms, that, in live dissections, the blood strongly circulates a long time after the left ventricle hath lost its pulse; yea, though the heart be taken out, yet presently is not the motion of the blood destroyed; which seems to be confirmed by the experiment upon frogs, which leap so nimbly, and swim so freely, after their hearts are exempted, that they cannot be known from unwounded frogs, that exercise in

their company; * the story whereof that most dexterous anatomist, Dr. Needham, hath published. Moreover, if a ligature be applied to a vein or artery, whereby the pulse is intercepted with the undulation of the blood also, yet the blood, beyond the bond, runs its course toward the heart; and which is so much the more strange, because it is the motion of a heavy body, contrary to its natural tendency, upward. Moreover, if the pulse of the heart were the only cause of the motion of the blood, why then is not the menstrual blood thrust into other parts, as well as into the uterine ? Since the other parts, equally with these, receive the constant force of the heart's even pulsations and impartial distributions. Likewise we see, that the animal spirits in the nerves, with their juice, the lympha in its ducts, the chyle in its thoracicks, the seed in its seminals, the urine in the ureters, and the phlegm in its pituitary vessels are all in motion, without the force of any such

De format. Fœtu.

engine to give the origin thereto. Whereupon, I am apt to conjecture, that nature hath furnished several parts with an attractive. power, the blood with fermentation, and several vessels with a kind of vermicular motion of their own, no doubt excited by the nerves, the porta with asinus in the liver, which serves for a pump, and the cava, or one part of it, with a pulsifick energy (by which blood is thrust into the right ventricle, as the learned Walæus asserts) by which the motion of humours is promoted; and consequently, that the rareness of the structure, unweariedness of the pulsations of the heart, &c. are designed to some higher ends, than merely, and as such, to give motion, though that it doth with an emphasis.

Fourthly, How can spirits, both vital and animal, be prepared and separated without food, and frequent fermentations? R. 1. Whether there be a flux of animal spirits through the Genus nervosum seems yet not fully resolved; and, if no flux, then the waste is small, and a small reparation may supply a small waste. But, I confess, I understand not how narcotick fumes, nor redundant humours, restagnating in the brain, can cause an apoplexy, epilepsy, palsy, &c. in the whole body, if there be no flux of spirits from the brain; nor how the hurt from a coach in the seventh vertebre of the back, mentioned by great Galen, could cause a palsy in three fingers; nor why we anoint the vertebres of the back for palsies in the extreme parts, if there be no flux of spirits. 2. Supposing a flux of animal spirits through the nervous system, yet, according to the doctrine of famous Dr. Wharton,* much of the nervous juice, separated by the glandules, is returned by the veins and lymphaticks, and so not lost, though infeebled by its peregrination; and more yet deposited, according to Dr. Willis, the great reformer of physick, by the extremity of the nerves in the habit of the body, is again retrieved by the lymphaticks, which, serving in our absti nents little or nothing to assimulation, only somewhat to the cherishing of the implanted spirits, is the more plentifully returned, and so the loss, thus far forth, less considerable than ordinary. 3. It is apparent, that there is a decay of these spirits, as well as an obstruction, in most of these abstinents, as witnesseth their great inability to motion. 4. The fermentations, mentioned before, though small, may contribute something to the increase of these spirits for chymists know that there are few juices so insipid, so sterile, but, by the help of fermentation, may yield a not contemptible spirit. 5. Those spirits that pass from the brain to the extremity of the body, and thence returned, as before, by the lymphaticks, and that more forceably and plentifully, being reflected by the impervious cold and constipated skin, seem rather tired than exhausted, which may, by the small ferments aforementioned, the contritions, mixtions, and exaltations of the heart, and the perpetual motions of the scarlet liquor, be rarefied and volatilised, to do, at a dead lift, further good service. 6. It is

De Glandulis.

notorious, that scents do hugely affect the brain; as to instance in apoplexies, hysterical passions, and in some sort of syncopes and cephalalgies, common practice doth demonstrate. So then, if feeding animals perceive such strange alterations, by odoriferous exhalations, as of Assa fætida, Galbanum, Verrucæ Equinæ, &c. which, according to the prodigious invention of the most philosophical Dr. Willis, are able to restrain the most violent explosions (like those of gunpowder, than which none more violent) of the nitro-sulphureous atoms, with which, in spasmodick distempers, the nervous juice is impregnated, and by which it is reduced to the greatest disorders, why may not these abstinents be relieved by such inriched fumes also?

*

Fifthly, Without sleep no long life, and, without food, no sleep; for, say the ancients, sleep is the binding up of the first sensorium, or common-sense, caused by the food digesting in the stomach, elevating its fumes to the brain, which, there condensing, stop the passages of the animal spirits, whereby they are detained from their just visitations, whence the senses are disabled for the execution of their offices. R. 1. It is not certain, that sleep is absolutely necessary to life, for we read of many that lived waking: It is said that Ramus studied philosophy so incessantly, that he became blind, or deaf, or both, through defect of sleep. Rhasis watched so long at his study of physick, until, at last, he could not sleep at all; likewise a doctor of the law studied so indefatigably, that he never laid his eye-lids together for four months; yet all recovered by the use of hypnoticks. The most inquisitive Galenist, Fernelius, reports a certain man to have survived fourteen months waking. The grave Heurnius relateth a story from, he saith, a truly learned man, Jerom Montuus, of a noble matron that lived thirty-five years without sleep, nor hurt thereby; and of another that lived ten years waking. Seneca reports, that Mæcenas lived three years without sleep, and at last was recovered by musick. 2. But I affirm not that our jejunants are vigilants, and therefore add, that, though these persons receive no external food, yet airy condensations and concretions, the phlegmatick humours, colliquations of the parts, &c. afford matter for such vapours; and so much the more plentifully, because they are environed with a thick wall, whose very crevices, and much more gates, and publick outlets, are so close shut up and barricadoed, that these troops of exhalations, that were wont to be dispersed, are now crouded together, which, assaulting the brain, may do much to bind up her common-sense. 3. It seems probable, by apoplecti-, cal dormitators, that a cold humour, lodged in the brain, is a great causer of sleep; and why such a humour may not lodge in a sufficient proportion, in these constipated brains, to procure intermitting sleeps, I see not. 4. It is apparent that narcoticks, as

Aristot. de Somn. & Vigil. c. 3. Ἡ το πρώτο αἰσθητηρία κατάληψις πρὸς τὸ un duvãodas ivepyev. Galen. de Sympt. Caus. c. 8. & de Motu Muscul. c. 4. Zacut. Lusitan. de Med. Princ. Hist. p. 23, 24, 25. Lib. v. Patholog. Lib. de Morb. Cap. c. 16. Lib. de Provi dentia.

opium, and in their measure, wines, tobacco, &c. provoke sleep; not by any cold quality, for they are all proved to be hot, but, it is probable, by adding such a ferment to the blood, as renders the spirits, separated in the brain, more torpid, ignave, and, consequently, unapt to motion, and the execution of their offices; or, which is almost the same thing, as renders the blood unapt for separation of spirits in the brain's alembick, whence the wearied spirits, for want of fresh supplies, are becalmed and quiescent. So then, if the humours, in the bodies of these abstinents, should happily partake of these narcotick sulphurs, they may prove somniferous, without the elevation of fumes from digesting food. But, sir, lest you should be startled at this unphilosophical discourse, in representing sleep rather as a non-emission of spirits from the brains, than a non-immission of them to the brain from the external senses, and consequently, as a negation of action, rather than of passion, I crave leave to mind you, that I am not only deficient in the beard, but much more in the brain, of some very great philosophers, who rank not only the external senses, but the first internal, or common-sense, in the predicament of passions ; which, I confess, I cannot understand, because I know, that when devout persons are taken up in divine services, though their eyes be wide open, and presented with various objects, yet they see them not, because they mind them not; likewise, when diligent students are intent upon their books, they hear not the clock that strikes at their ears; and sound sleepers, with lethargical persons, feel not the pulling and hauling of their friends that would awake them, &c. From whence I conjecture, that, though ob. jects act ad ultimum virium upon the external senses in imprinting their species, yet that causeth not sensation, except there be an actual attendance of the sensitive spirits upon the sensible objects, a framing of their effigies or species, and a conveyance thereof to the understanding. Can you imagine that Columbus's journey to the Indies, his surveying that unknown world, and returning a map thereof to his own countrymen, was a mere passion of his, and only the action of a novel jig of American atoms? Or, Camden's perambulation through all the coasts of this island, with his observations thereon, which he digested into a valuable volume, was merely his suffering, but wholly the doing of subtile spirits, and æthereal globules magically charmed into a once happy com. bination? But to return, 5. Cold juices, as of housleek, lettuce, violets, &c. will conduce to our sleep, and, it is not to be doubted, but the juices in these bodies may be cold enough to effect the same. 6. The animal spirits, in these persons, being but languid, are the less active, and, consequently, can give the fewer repulses to the insinuating courtships of somniferous causes. 7. The spirits of these languishers, it is probable, are scant and defective, and, therefore, easily tired by their constant operations, and consequently easily persuaded, either by a command of the heavenborn soul, or an exhalation from the earthy body, to yield to this temporary death. 8. Great security of mind, pleasing fancies,

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