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CHAP. XLIII. The Duumvirate or Sheriffdome.
1. Sleep is from a Sleepifying or somnoriferous power, and not from a defect. 2. The Opinion of the Schools concerning Sleep. 3. The Opinion of the Antients is opposed. 4. Contradictions. 5. The thingliness of Opiates. 6. The immpossiblity is shewn from the Scituation of the Sinews. 7. That Sleep happens, the Opiate remaining within the Stomack. 8. From the effect of Opium. 9. The Sulphur of Vitriol is taught. 10. Some absurdities accom∣panying the position of the Schools. 11. A ridiculous privy shift. 12. When Dreams are made. 13. Why the Headach ariseth from over-eating or drink∣ing. 4. Paine ariseth from a contraction of the Coats of the Brain, with∣out a Vapour. 15. A Position for the Duumvirate. 16. The Conclusion.
THe Heathen Poet doth morally, yet from a homely judgement, call Sleep, the Image [unspec 1] of Frozen Death. But I, seeing that I know Sleep to be a natural power, dismis∣sed from the principality of the Stomack into the Brain, and to be committed to the charge of the Power of Government, that it might be put in execution; being a Christi∣an, do believe that God (alwaies to be sanctified) When he intended to frame Woman of the rib, he cast a Sleep upon Adam: Not indeed as a privative Being, but as an actual real faculty, and meerly positive: And therefore that the Power of Sleeping is vital, necessary, and consequently natural: For I may not believe, that God made Death in man, or the image thereof: Neither was it meet, that the image of Death should go before sin, and the occasion of Death.
The Schools indeed teach, that Sleep is caused by vapours lifted up out of the [unspec 2] Stomack into the Brain, stopping or intercepting the passages of the Senses, Motion, Speech, Judgement, &c. which things surely, I being as yet a young man, judged to be ridiculous: For in very deed, so a disease had been before sin; because sleep should be a disease; to wit, there had been a flatulent and vapoury Palsie, and Temporary [unspec 3] madness, both in a body then as yet, not capable of suffering, and in a life immortal. Its a shamefull thing therefore, that the blockishness of Paganisme should as yet be seriously taught in the Schools, especially by Christians, better instructed. Yea the Schools do erre in their own position proposed.
For those that sleep do move, and turn themselves up and down, some do walls [unspec 4] about, do feel the stings of a gnat or flie, so as that they do thereby awake: others also do speak, and oft-times aptly answer. At length, as the Schools do badly accord with themselves, while they confound sleep, and waking Catarrhs, with the same root, causes, and manner of making; so I, after that the toyes of a Catarrhe were hissed our, rejected also the assigned causes of sleep, as vain fables. Last of all the Schools also lay hands on themselves, while they teach, that from Opiates, things (as they say) most cold, and rather things powerfully restraining every evapouration (at least wise they are feigned to restrain, &c. Vapours for Catarrhs, more than Coriander) from their own nature; Sleep, the Drowsie evil, yea and death are most readily brought on a man: and so much the more speedily, by how much the Opiate [unspec 5] shall be of a more gradual cold in quality and quantity: And that by how much the more of sincere Opium shall be taken, and the more inward cooling made, by so much the more plentiful, and more continued vapours should be brought from the stomack into the head, also although the mouth of the stomack be shut. But surely it is a stupid devise, that sleep should be made by cold. Neither is it to be understood, how one onely grain of Opium can cause a sufficiency of cold in the Stomack, and had actually driven a sufficient quantity of vapours into the Head? How likewise, it shall belong to cold, to stir up vapours, rather than to re∣strain