A new and needful treatise of spirits and wind offending mans body wherein are discovered their nature, causes and effects / by the learned Dr. Fienns ; and Englished by William Rowland ...

CHAP. II.

Of the Analogy or Proportion between the flatuous Spirit and Wind, or the Wind in Man and in the Earth.

THere are two things that chiefly blow up our bodies, and prepare them for diseases; diet and the air. Food, though at first unlike, is at length made like us, and turned into the sub∣stance of the body: Therefore by long use the body will be of the same nature. For all Diet, though well concocted, keeps it in a natural and genuine condition: therefore Lettice and other cold things, though they be overcome by conco∣ction, yet cool the stomach and whole body, and produce cold blood. So Wine and Garlick produce hot blood: Fish, Cheese, and salt Meats, gross blood. By which it is clear, that not only the spirits and humours by which we

are preserved, are changed, but the constitution of the whole body. Therefore a cool diet pre∣pares the body to breed wind, by oppressing the native heat. Also too much of the best meats and drinks, such as burdens Nature, cannot be well concocted or turned into good blood, but many crudities will be, which will cause obstru∣ctions and rottenness, or corruption, by which the natural heat is suffocated, as the wiek of a candle by too much grease. This crudity and abundance of humours is gathered in all, chiefly the Northern Inhabitants: these, as if it were too low a thing to slay with a sword, or hang with a halter, or fight publickly, kill them∣selves with kindness, they contend in drinking healths, and riot night and day, and add new surfeits to the former, and leave not off, till they vomit what they take in, or are ready to burst; forgetting the saying, That gluttony and drunk∣enness kill more then the sword. When too much food is taken, it causeth a disease. It is no wonder, if such have many excrements and wind, which for their abundance are not easily voided. Also the Country and air is of much force. For a hot Country, as the Summer, in∣flames the spirits, dries the humours, and increaseth Choler, which causeth most acute diseases. But a cold and moist air, as it is in the North, is like the Winter, stupifies the spi∣rits, stops the Pores, and burdens the body with

many superfluous humours, and oppresseth the native heat. Hence the concoction is weakned, and there are crudities, and fluctuations of food in the stomach, distillations, chronick diseases, stones, worms, wind, and the like. These breed in Man the little world, as in the great, unto which Aristotle compares him. For as in the great world there are four Elements, Fire, Air, Water, Earth; so there are the same in the little: and as in all those Elements are divers substances bred, as in the earth stones and trees; in the water, divers Creatures; in the air, thun∣der, lightning, rain: so in man there are bred bones as stones; and worms and lice as living Creatures; and distillations as rain, and wind, or a flatus like the wind in the earth. To be short, the image of the Universe is clear in man. For God, when in six days he had wonderfully made the world, and set all things in order, so that nothing seemed to be wanting, made man as the abridgment of all the rest, to extol his Divine power and wisdom, and admire his works. Moreover, there is nothing in Heaven or Earth, the like whereunto may not be found in man, if you diligently search and consider the Soul is his God, the understanding and will are his angelical Spirits; heat, cold, moisture, and driness answer to the outward Elements. In the heat appear divers flashes and fiery representa∣tions, Frenzies, Inflammations, Erysipelas, Fea∣vers.

In the moisture are distillations and Nodes, that come from thence like hail. also the humours ebbe and flow in the veins and ar∣teries. But the earthy Element of this little world is most like the great, in which are stones, which our bones do resemble: and Ovid calls the stones the bones of our great mother Earth. As the Plants, Corn, and Trees are in the Earth, so are the hairs in man. As Galen saith, hairs grow as Plants. For as some grow by the art of the Husbandman, others by natural causes only: so in animals the head is like a Wheat or Barley-field, and the hair in other parts is like other plants in drier ground. What shall I say of the Earthquake? when many exhalations are bred in the bowels of the Earth by force of the Sun and Stars, from a moisture that is sunk into the Earth, and from the matter of the Earth; when they cannot get forth by reason of the Earths closure or the grossness of the wind, there must needs be an Earthquake in part. So when flatuous spirits or wind is shut up in the cavity of the body, and strives to get out, there is great trembling; as Langius saith, if we may confer great things with small, as wind shut up in the bowels of the Earth, makes it tremble when it strives to get out▪ so a flatulent air or wind being kept in by the covers of the Muscles and other parts that may be stretched, shakes them till it breaks through the Membrane that

covers them: the vulgar ignorant of this, sup∣pose this to be the soul or life-blood. While it goes forth without doing hurt at the Pores, there is no trembling; but if they be stopt, it hunts about and gets into cavities, and strives to break through: so the wind striving to get out, shakes the body.

There is another reason of this trembling. The wind shut up in the cavities, being beaten back by the heat of the bowels and natural mo∣tion, grows hot by reason of the want of free∣dom, and so thinner. This insinuates it self into any part, even the principal parts, and falls swiftly upon sensible places, and doth not only disturb them with its quality, but pricks them with its thinness, and stretcheth, tears, or wounds them: for all biting or sharp causes that are moved, whether hot or cold, bring horrour and shaking to a living Creature. Thirdly, this spirit running to and fro, troubles the ex∣pulsive faculty, and the parts, which provoked, contract themselves speedily to expel the of∣fender, and so shake and tremble. Therefore this wind in man being like other wind, pro∣duceth the like effects. Now we shall shew what it is.