CHAP. XIII. The Essence of a Fever.
1. Of what sort an Essential, and Natural Definition is. 2. Diseases are Beings subsisting by themselves, and not accidents. 3. Why Diseases inhabite in a strange Inn. 4. A Disease is not only a Travel, nor a Motion, nor a Distemper, nor a Disposition. 5. The Essence of a Fever, which the Schools are hitherto ignorant of. 6. There is therefore another Scope of healing than what hath hitherto been▪ 7. That the occasional Cause alone distinguisheth Fevers. 8. The cure of a Phy∣sitian is made easie.
THE definition of a thing is not to be framed from the general kind of the thing de∣fined, and from the constitutive difference of the Species's or particular kinds, even as I have elsewhere demonstrated in Logicks: Because besides rational and irrational, (if so be they are as yet the constitutive differences of living Creatures) no differences of like sort [ 1] appear in the Schools: But a natural definition ought to consist of the material, and in∣ternal efficient, or seminal Causes: Because those two are those which constitute the thing it self, and that the whole, and they remain unseparably essential in it as long as it self is; and so they explain a thing by its causes, and the properties of these.
Truly Fevers have a matter, and an internal efficient cause after the manner of other Beings subsisting in them; although all diseases inhabite in a living body; because they are not Beings of the first Creation, but begun from the curse of the departure out of the right way; And therefore neither have they properly their own seminal Being which [ 2] constitutes, and nourishes them; But they have an occasional Being from whence they are stirred up instead of a seed; The which ceasing, the Disease ceaseth. [ 3]
As oft therefore as that which is not vital is inserted into a vital soil, the Archeus is angry and becomes wroth, that he may exclude that forreign thing out of his Ana∣tomy:
The which I have perfectly taught in the entrance of this Treatise, by a thorn thrust into the finger: Therefore a Fever is not only an expulsive endeavour, or alterative mo∣tion, (and much less the alteration and disposition it self, as the Schools have otherwise [ 4] thought) but a Fever is a material part it self of the Archeus defiled through indignation: For a part of the Archeus is defiled through anger, and receives an image or Idea of indignation, (the which is clearly expressed in a woman great with Child, fearing, or de∣siring any thing, while she conveighs the seal of the thing desired on her young) and whatsoever of the Archeus is defiled by that forreign Idea, this ought to have been rooted [ 5] out by the fit: so that that is the cause of wearisomness in Fevers, because the spirit being marked with a forreign likeness, or hateful image, as unapt for the performance of the wonted Offices of its government, totally vanisheth: For so those that profoundly con∣template, are tired with much weariness:
For the Archeus, if he hath an image brought into him, is unfit for governing of the body: For therefore persons void of care, the more healthy, more strong ones, and those of a longer life, do slowly wax grey: The endeavour therefore of a Physitian is not to di∣rect unto the effect, or unto the alterations naturally received in the Archeus: For (as I have said) in Diseases, all things depend on the occasional cause implanted into the field of Life; because Diseases have not in them an essential root of permanency and stability, as other Beings have which consist and subsist by their own seeds; Because in very deed, all do immediatly consist in the life; (therefore in a dead Carcase there is no disease) and there∣fore all the destruction, and cessation of these, depends on the removal of the occasio∣nal cause.
Page 986 The Scope therefore of healing cannot turn it self unto the cooling of heat, or to the' stupefying of alterative motions, as neither unto the expectation of Conco∣mitant accidents, [ 6] and produced effects: For the Physitian shall labour in vain, shall loose his labour, time, and occasions, as long as he shall not be intent on the withdrawing of the occasional cause: yea by how much the more he shall do that, by so much the more delightfully, and acceptably there will be help. In all Fevers there is one only inflaming, or indignation of the Archeus, whence also they agree in the Essence, and name of a [ 7] Fever, being distinguished only by their occasional cause.
Indeed the Matter, and Inne distinguisheth Fevers: yea it is of no great moment with a good Physitian, to have curiously searched into the diversities of Fevers according [ 8] to the properties of the matter, and places, since it is neither granted him to have pre∣vented them, neither can it be said to a remedy, Go thou unto such a vein, or unto that place; For it is sufficient to have known what things I have already before in gene∣ral concluded: And let the whole study of a Physitian be, to have found out remedies, with whom all Fevers are of the same value and weight, as I shall presently declare.
