Observations upon experimental philosophy to which is added The description of a new blazing world / written by the thrice noble, illustrious, and excellent princesse, the Duchess of Newcastle.

24. Of Fermentation.

FErmentation, of which Helmont, and his follow∣ers make such a stir, as 'tis enough to set all the world a fermenting or working; is nothing else, but what is vulgarly called digestion; so that it is but a new term for an old action: And these digestions or Fermentations, are as various and numerous as all o∣ther actions of Nature, to wit, Respiration, Evacu∣ation, Dilation, Contraction, &c. for action and working are all one.

But there are good and ill Fermentations; those are done by a sympathetical agreement of parts, but these by an antipathetical disagreement: Those tend to the preservation of the subject, these to its destruction; Those are regular, these irregular: So that there are numerous sorts of fermentations, not onely in several sorts of Creatures, but in several parts of one and the same Creature: for Fermentation or Digestion is ac∣cording to the composition of the fermenting or dige∣stive parts, and their motions.