is a part of exquisite sence. But if it bee so, it may be demaunded, why then the wombe is pleased with sweet smels and displeased with those that are vnpleasant; for it seemeth here∣by to make choyce of smelles euen for the very sauour and sent? I answere that all thinges which yeeld a noysome smell are vnconcocted and of a bad or imperfect mixture, & ther∣fore they affect the sence with a kinde of inaequality; or else the spirits or vapours that arise from these ranke bodies are impure (whence come faintings and swoundings sometimes,) and so defile the spirits contayned in these generatiue parts.
One difficulty there yet remayneth. If the wombe delight in sweete sauours, why then doth the smell of Amber greece, muske and such like bring suffocation of the mother; and that of assa faetida and castoraeum & such like extreme stinking things cure the same disease? I answere, that all women fall not into suffocation vpon the smelling of sweet perfumes or the like, but onely those whose wombe is especially euilly affected. For sweet smels hauing a quicke spirit arising from them, doe instantly affect the Brayn and the membranes of the same, the membranous wombe is presently drawne into consent with the Brayne and moued, so as those bad vapours which before lay as it were a sleep in the ill affected womb, are now stirred and wrought vp by the arteries or other blinde passages vnto the midriffe, the heart and the braine it selfe, and so comes the suffocation we spake off. But those things that yeeld a noysome sauour, because they are crude and ill mixt, doe stoppe the passages and pores of the braine, and do not reach vnto the inner membranes to affect them: they cure also the Hystericall paroxisme or fitte of the mother, because our nature being offended with them as with enimies rowseth vp it selfe against them, and together with the ill vapors∣excludeth also out of the wombe the euil humors from whence they arise, euen as in acute diseases nature being prouoked by the ill quality of the humors moueth to criticall excreti∣ons, or in purgations when she is goaded with the aduerse quality of the medicine relie∣ueth her selfe by euacuation.
But you will aske by what passages are these vapours and spirites carried. I answere, be∣side the open passages of the arteries by which such ayrie spirits doe continually passe and repasse, in a mans body there are many secret and vnknowne waies which those subtile bo∣dies may easily finde, considering that euen crasse and thicke humours doe ordinarily fol∣low medicines we know not by what passages; as when a little Elaterium euen a graine or two will purge away three of foure pintes of water or more which lay before in the capaci∣ty of the Abdomen, drawing it thence into the guttes, and yet we knowe no direct passages from the one part to the other; and this hath made men to say that as open as the body of glasse is to the light although it be very solide, so open is the whole body as to external aire of which we finde our body oftentimes very sensible, so to humours, much more to spirits and thinne and subtile vapours. Experience hereof we haue in the vse of Tobacco, for a man shall often finde it sensibly in his toes and fingers ends presently vpon the raking.
But of this we shall take leaue in the next discourse to speake a little more largely seeing it not onely concerneth almost all women, but may serue somewhat to stay their minds vp∣pon many accidents which euery day befall them