Van Helmont's works containing his most excellent philosophy, physick, chirurgery, anatomy : wherein the philosophy of the schools is examined, their errors refuted, and the whole body of physick reformed and rectified : being a new rise and progresse of philosophy and medicine, for the cure of diseases, and lengthening of life / made English by J.C. ...

CHAP. VII. The conjoyned cause of the Antients.

IN diseases universally and without exception, I at sometime, in discoursing of a disease in general, have acknowledged no efficient and external cause, besides an oc∣casional one only. Now moreover, I have shewn, that I have justly denied to give the heaven passage unto the plague; although in the mean time, the Blas of a Meteor may be able to dispose the suffering subject unto a more ready impression of receiving. There∣fore I will first apply my self unto the connexed causes of the Pest, which we read to be referred by the Antients, into the corruption of humours, and inflammation of heat; and therefore their preservatives written down, are supposed to be adjudged only by way of resisting the putrefaction of humours. But the Schools have not yet ex••lained, what that vitiated humour enflamed with heat may be, or with what name to be endowed, which may be the fire-brand of the plague, in the veins, bowels, or habit of the body: and they have not yet known, that in Aegypt a destructive plague is rather extinguish∣ed than incensed by great heats: Even as among us, that the ••e••tilence is for the most part, rather in Autumn, than in Summer: For sometimes the Schools run back unto E••∣demicks, as well those domestical, as forraign, the which are believed to incite and heap up putrefaction after any manner whatsoever.

In the next place, for preservatives, they scrape together any simples, although hot ones, so they are but commended by the faith of He••barists: But the doub••ing of the Schools, as also the unprosperous uncertainty of remedies, is every where covered with the ridiculous event of divers complexions; the whi••h surely hath been hitherto a com∣mon and thred-bare aptness or fitness for excusing their excuses in death: and at length, through the great fear of Doctors, of the plague, the distrust of the Schools is discovered to be beyond the Laws, and promises of books: at leastwise, they asswage the unlucky obediences of the sick, by one only saying, It so stood in the Destini••••: Therefore, that they must patiently bear it, because that, or the other miserable man, was referred into the Catalogue of those that were to die.

In the mean time, the work of the plague is cruel, but more cruel is he who brags of help, and brings it not: The progress of the plague is swift, by reason of so great slug∣gishness of Physitians: The venom in the plague, at leastwise, is not quieted at one only moment; neither doth that admit of peace, which despiseth Tr••ce. If therefore there were any humours corrupted in the Pest, in th••••r being made, through putrefaction, see∣ing they cannot return, and be reduced into their antient b••i••htness of integrity, and the first, and chiefest natural betokening of diseases in the Schools, is most speedily to pluck up the hurtful humour, and that all succours are vain, but those which do readily and fully sequester the offending filth; It should follow, that their universal succours (to wi••, pur∣gings, and cuttings of a vein) are the most potent helps of the plague: The which notwithstanding, are already many times found to hasten on death. That supposition also of necessity falls down together, which introduceth corrupt humours for the immediate

cause of the plague: For in very deed, the Pest, doth rather infect the nourishable hu∣mours, than that these are the cause of the Pest: Otherwise, I have elsewhere made it sufficiently manifest, that nature doth not acknowledge, nor ever had humours in the constitution of the bloud: Wherefore, neither are these able to cause any thing, because they are non-beings.

Again, if humours in the making of their putrefaction, should be the connexed cause of the Pest: at leastwise, the Schools ought to have set forth the name of that humour, and likewise to have expounded the manner and process, whereby those humours are cor∣rupted, and how, they being now corrupted, are the conjoyned cause of the plague: and also, after what sort they may be speedily sequestred, together with the hinderance of their impression on the vital parts. It had behoved them in the next place, to point out the place wherein the assembly of the foregoing pestilent corruption, as it were in a Nest, was held. For if this center be the veins, or bowels (to wit, where the first seque∣stration of excrements happeneth) all sweat should be altogether hurtful; because it is that which should bring the poyson from the stomach, or liver, through the vital bowels, and not pour it forth neerer, thorow the accustomed sinks: For so the Lues Venerea, only by a Gonorrhea, chusing its mansion in the Testicles, if by solutive medicines, it be drawn back from the shops of the urine, that it may go back through the veins into the paunch, It spreads a necessary Lues, only by that passage, into the whole body. Much more therefore should the Pest, if it had defiled the humours in their own shops, and should be b••ought sorth, in passing thorow by sweats, infallibly defile all of whatsoever is vital within. But if indeed, the habit of the body be the place of the putrefaction of pestilential humours; now the Diet of Physitians shall be ridiculous, which is believed to hinder the generating of putrifiable humours.

In the next place, from what, and from whence, putrefaction in good juicy blood, should arise in the habit, or also in the center of the body, before the plague, not any thing hath been determined by the Schools concerning all thes•• things; as thinking it suf∣ficient to have said by the way, that the corruption of humours is the conjoyned cause of the plague, because run away Doctors have never beheld this, but asquint: For when they observed, that a laxative medicine being drunk up, the flesh and blood being consu∣med by that venom, and a yellow humour, or pale snivel, or the more dark blood, not yet fully transchanged, did flow forth; they affirmed that, not only the venal blood, but the whole body, did consist of four humours differing in kind, and that they were again resolved into them: Even so, that they have supposed this putrefaction for the Pest, to be begun in yellow Choler, being compared to fire, or in black Choler, and therefore call∣ed melancholly, as being neerer to earth, Saturn, and malignity.

Truly, although I have elsewhere abundantly demonstrated four humours as a frivolous and hurtful invention; yet let us now grant, by way of supposition of a false∣hood, that the blood did consist of a commixture of those four humours; yet when the blood hath now ceased to be, and is by a formal transmutation, changed into a nourishable and vital liquor, which immediately nourish∣eth, increaseth, and cherisheth every member; it at leastwise fights with the truth of Phy∣lo••ophy, that that nourishable liquor being degenerated from blood, by a formal trans∣changing, had not yet forgotten its former condition, and compacture. Suppose thou, if Wine, Ale, the liquor of flesh, with the juice of po••herbs, be drunk at one meal, and changed into blood; certainly that constitution of the blood is not one, as long as it con∣sisteth of those four divers things being as yet co-mixed: but those four are made only one, while as by a formal transmutation, they are made a new product, which is blood. In like manner therefore, although the blood should consist of a connexion of four hu∣mours; yet seeing they are now one, and no longer four; that one thing constituted shall be no longer that thing connexed of the four original liquors granted: Neither can the diseases resulting from thence, either insist or be accounted as humorous in healing; they not b••ing any more able to return back into those four feigned humours (although they are granted to have been real ones) than the blood that is once made, can return into the former Wine, Ale, Broath of fleshes, and juice of potherbs. It is manifest there∣fore, that the Schools, contrary to all Phylosophy, are ignorant, that there is a formal transmutation, while blood is made of meats; and while of blood a nourishable liquor is made.

And it is manifest from the aforesaid blindnesses, that the greatest part of diseases hath been committed upon trust, unto the ignorance of principles in the Schools. But I inge∣niously protest, that I have never found even the least tittle of assisting aid in any books

of Ancestours: For although many being as it were holpen, did recover; nevertheless, I have seen ten-fold more, who from the beginning of the invasion of the plague, had made use of the fame remedies, to have unhappily perished: For Triacle for a long time ago, hath always promised help, and the water thereof is now accounted every where more excellent, although they know, who have known the properties of the Pest, that they contain a vain help: For Antidotes which restrain poyson, have nothing of certainty against the plague: and therefore University-Physitians da••e not expose themselves to the contagion of the plague, under the unfaithful safegu•••• of Triacle; because the poyson of the Pest is a far secret one from any other. But some Religious persons in a City, leaving nothing unattempted, whereby they might obtain moneys, or esteem, profess to sell the most choice Triacle at a great price: But since none going to warfare in Christ, infolds himself in secular affairs; I exhort every one chiefly to be••are of such pompous Boasters: For why, they enter not in by the door, but above, by the roof; being not call∣ed, they intrude themselves into medicine: For these will almost say with Tully, We have deceived the people, and have seemed most famous Apothecaries: For Triacle was as yet un∣known unto Hippocrates, the subduer of the plague: It receiveth a three-fold quantity of honey, according to the plenty of all simples: Also sixty simples being at discord, be∣ing dry, hard, shut up, crude, excrementous, and for the most part inveterate from the age of two years: These Simples I say, are rendred much barren from the mixture of ••oil∣ed honey: They require also a mixture and digestion from the feeble Feverish person, ••e∣specially from the stomach being vitiated by poyson, and from the Archeus being in∣wardly prostrated, and confusedly tumulting: Wherefore they perform little of help, and the least of comfort: For the cocted Trochies of the Viper, since by the ad∣monition of Galen, they are the Capital Simple of Triacle, do easily teach, that the wa∣ter of Triacle is plainly ridiculous: For if the Viper stated the Triacle water with virtue, in distilling; why have the Trochies of the Viper, in its first and Galenical cocture, put off all that prerogative of healing? What therefore shall I do with those who are always learning, and never coming unto the knowledge which they profess to teach? For most men (as Seneca witnesseth) have not attained unto that Science; because they thought that they had attained it. At length, neither hath it been sufficient to have concealed the names of those humours, which they have imagined to putrifie before the plague, and to be the accompanying cause hereof: But moreover, in skipping over that, they pass over the very thingliness of the corruption, which now and then, finisheth its Tragedy in a few hours.

For Physitians seem to have rested on a soft pillow, while their Neighbours house is on fire; and their head being once elevated on their elbow, to have declared the Ar∣rest:

The plague is a contagious disease, from putrified humours, being connexed to a Fe∣ver, most sharp, and exceeding dangerous: which being said, they having very well fed, to have bent down their head again for their afternoon sleep; which sleep, under so great light, hath again closed their eyes. The world in the mean time, bewails its condition, seeing the effects, not the causes, as neither in the next place, the remedies to be noted by this judgement: Wherefore the Country people with both hands, scratching their hair on their Temples, pronounce another Arrest. There is no need (say they) of much stu∣dy, nor of so many books, that any may say, the Plague is mortal and contagious, the which, every one hath learned by his own malady: Therefore it shall be better to ask coun∣sel of faithful helpers, no longer of drowsie ones, who are Fugitives from the Plague, and ignorant of remedies.