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. VII.

How many kinds of Diseases are pro∣duced by Wind.

GAlen made three chief sorts of Diseases, a Similary, Instrumental, and a Common, which is the solution of unity. A similary dis∣ease is that which overthrows the natural con∣stitution. An Organical or Instrumental is that which hinders the fashion in conformation, number, magnitude, or composition. The Common is, when unity is dissolved in part. Let us see which of these wind will produce. Hip∣pocrates, Lib. de flatibus saith, when a body is full of food, and much wind prevails, and the meat lies long in the stomach, and cannot get

out for abundance, and the lower belly is stopt or bound, wind goes over all the body, and gets chiefly to the parts full of blood, and cools them: And if the parts be cooled where the blood comes, there is chilness over all the body. For when all the blood is cold, the whole body must be chill. Galen Meth. med. 12. confirms this saying, that such diseases are in those that are stuffed with gross clammy food that is cold, when the wind in the tunicles of the guts cannot get forth. For the tunicles are double, and the humour being between them is turned into wind, it is gross and cold, and of slow mo∣tion. When it is detained, it stretcheth the tunicles, and the juyce whence it comes cools the guts it toucheth, and they are doubly af∣flicted. By these instances it is plain, that wind by its coldness can make a similary disease that consists in distemper, and also the solution of unity. For there is pain and stretching of the tunicles, which cannot be without laceration. For there are two universal causes of pain; one is an unequal distemper which comes suddenly, and another when continuity is dissolved. For parts dissolved by a humour or wind, are pain∣ed by the separation. Because if Hippocrates say, cold is biting to Ulcers for no other cause, but it contracts, and condenseth, and constring∣eth all parts it toucheth, and so twitcheth the soft parts of the continuity, and dissolves it.

Also if in acute fevers nervous bodies are most dried, and therefore have Convulsion; and if too much repletion that pulls it up and down, and makes it shorter, and so separates conti∣nuity, how much more difficulty of solution of continuity will wind cause, which for that only cause produce such strange Symptoms that re∣quire the whole care of a Physitian. Thirdly, it will appear by what follows, that the whole Abdomen or Panch swells by wind, as in a Tympany; and the Liver and Spleen are won∣derfully stopt thereby, and hard as a Schirrhus and swollen, as also the stomach; and all these are instrumental diseases: therefore organical diseases are also from wind. Also Galen de diff. morb. saith, when any part is swollen, and so its passage stopt, if that part hath no proper opera∣tion, that stoppage is only called a disease: but the tumour is not, but only is the cause of ob∣struction. But if the part affected hath any proper office, then the obstruction and the tu∣mour of the part are both diseases. Therefore the three sorts of diseases, distemper of simple parts, and disorder of instrumental, and solution of united parts, are from wind.