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. VI.

Of the Differences of Wind bred in the Body.

THe wind is of divers natures: one sort is quiet, another moved. The quiet is gross, and of flow motion, cloudy and cold, that brings seldom any Symptoms but a swollen Belly and Hypochondria, without much pain. This troubles such commonly that drink thick sweet Ale, or Milk, or Water, between meals chiefly: for that corrupts concoction, and weakneth the action of the stomach, as if you should pour cold water into a boiling Kettle; and thence there will be cloudy vapours and fluctuations that will swell the Belly like a Drum, which will fall with sobriety and a stool or two. But if it stay long between the tunicles of the guts, it threatens a dangerous Colick. A moved wind, because it is thin, and running about with great pain, is like a changeable Pro∣teus: It is either cast out or retained, goes forth with or without noise, by the mouth or Funda∣ment. By the mouth the belch is sour, or smoak-like, and unsavory: by the Fundament it is with or without noise. These are of so much concern∣ment in the body of man, as the Stoicks ac∣cording

to Cicero Lib. 9. epist. epist. 22. said, that a fart ought to be as free as a belch. And Claudius Caesar made an Edict to give leave for any to fart at meat, because he knew one endangered by refraining through modesty. Suet in vita Claudii, cap. 23. But when wind is sent out at neither part, but detained, it causeth a swelling: a Symptom of the stomach not able through weakness to expel the abounding cloudy spirit. Also Galen 3. Symp. caus. lib. 6. cap. 6. saith, there are divers parts of the guts in which the wind moves, which though they have not di∣stinct names; yet may they so be declared, that any ingenious person may understand what kind, and how much the excrement is, and in what part it chiefly moves. For if it sound sharp and shrill, it is carried through the strait gut, and is more pure and aerial. If it puff up, it will make a small noise while it goes through the small guts, but not so sharp and shrill. All these noises are in the spaces of the empty gut usually, & make the less noise the lower they go. Other noises are humming, like that of Pipes, which cannot give a pure sound, by reason of the matter they consist of; and the passage be∣ing large, makes the sound greater. Such winds are in the thick guts, when they are empty; and if any moisture be contained in them, it will cause a kind of Bombus, which is a rumbling, which shews a moist stool to be

at hand, because it is from Nature moving; and it is moist, because it rumbled before. Also the noise that follows the stool, if it rumbles, signifies more stools: but if it be pure and clear, it shews that either the gut is empty, or that hard excrements are in its upper part. That which is shrill, is from the straitness of the passa∣ges and little moisture. We might here add the different sounds of the wind in the ear: but we shall reserve that for the eleventh Chapter, where we shall speak of the pains of the ears.