the nitro-sulphureous plants, which renders them, of late, sus pected of impertinency? For, to what end should these plants be given to those persons, whose blood exceeds with salt and sulphur already? Yet, in the colder, more cachectical sorts of scurvy and melancholy, nothing possibly may be found more proper; for it is well known, that fixed salts and fluid salts, or (which is the same thing) acid spirits, do highly ferment, and cause a considerable heat; as lately discovered itself to me, in the preparation of Tartarus Vitriolatus. Whence I further conjecture, that those preparations of chalybs, coral, and other saline concretes, which rob them of their salts, or (which is the same thing) that glut them with acidities so plentifully, as to leave no capacity to receive more acids, do spoil them, co nomine, of their fermenting virtue. But, lest I should seem to transgress, whilst I intend scarcely to digress, I return to remind you, that you have a third ferment, which, in these abstinents, is presumable to be highly useful; for several of them (not to say all) were spleneticks, before they were abstinents. * Fourthly, It is probable, that the seminal humours, in these virgins, may, by a long abode in their vessels, grow acid, and thereby supply the blood with a more than ordinary ferment. Here are two things supposed: The first is, that the seed is impregnated with salt and that is proved by the many arguments of the philo sophical Dr. Ente. The other is, that the seed, by its principles, may elaborate the blood: This is evident in females, whose seed being grown fecundate and vegete, it so levens the blood, that, except it purge itself by menstrual terms, it exposes to innumer. able diseases; but much more manifest in men, by the eruption of their beards, the greatening of their voice, the heating of their blood, effeminate desires, &c. These things being evidently so, it will much strengthen our hypothesis to observe, that most of these damsels fall to this abstinence between the age of fourteen and twenty years, when the seed hath so fermented the blood, that various distempers will probably ensue, without due evacuations; except in our case, wherein, through the defect of fermenting food, we are enabled to bear the excess of these so much the better. Fifthly, There are several other innate ferments, placed by nature in human bodies, as the learned testify; as, that ascribed by Dr. Willis to the brain, for the freeing the spirits from the entanglements of other principles, to which they were married, whilst they abode in the blood, that so the brain's distillation might proceed the more prosperously: Likewise that in the reins, which is, like rennet to milk, to precipitate the serosities, that the ureters may exterminate them, as useless, burdensome excrements. There are many more assigned, yet more than can be numbered, if Dr. Willis's doctrine be true, of a fermentation through the habit of the body, caused by the concurrence of arterial blood and nervous juice. But these 1 lightly pass over, because, I conceive, they Apologia pro Circulo. De Ferment. p. 27, 28. # Anat. Cerebri, c. 20. p. 139. are not immediately intended for the elaborating of the bloody mass; yet I may not forget them, because, working upon the blood, it is not to be doubted, but the veins derive somewhat of their virtue with the retrieved blood. Sixthly, But to approach yet nearer to our mark. I affirm, that, though there be no edibles received, yet it follows not, that there is no sort of new chyle to renew the blood's fermentation; for, first, in these cold bodies, there must of necessity be a far greater quantity, consideratis considerandis, of pituitous humours, than ordinary; for, if transpiration be denied to our bodies but a very small time, what a redundance of phlegm doth presently oppress us! Which phlegm, being led into the mouth by a great variety of salivating ducts, and thence conveyed into the ventricle, may take off the acidity, the edge of the appetite; by which they tolerate their abstinence with greater patience, and also suffer a sorry concoction, which is much advanced by the attendance of all the concoctive forces, to subact this sluggish matter, which, in other bodies, are variously diverted by the great variety of food fre quently admitted. Secondly, It is probable, that some of these fasters were more than ordinarily addicted to phlegm before their abstinence; which is usual with those whose concoctions are low; and, with these, it is more than an even lay they were not very, high, which must needs be augmented by the defect of urine and stool; which, if granted, adds somewhat to our purpose. Thirdly, The air, received continually into the stomach by the mouth and nose, and also into the blood more directly, though sparingly by the pores, and virtually, if not formally, by the lungs, may contribute much to this humour, but more to the fermentation of the blood. That the air is impregnated with salts, the learned Dr. Ente affirms, and ascribes vegetation, as also the production of various animals thereunto, as the worthy Willis doth frost and ice. And it is asserted by chymists, that Caput Mortuums lixiviated, if exposed to the' open air for a good space, they shall re-attain their saline principle; and, that salts cause fermentation in the blood, hath been already noted. Yet one step further I may advance upon good ground, and that is, these salts may much renew the ferment of the stomach also, in lieu of other condiments. Moreover, the liver being an ample bowel, instructed with a great variety of vessels, inriched with constant traffick from most of the corporations in the microcosm, so curious in its elections and collections of the sulphuro-saline commodities, so diligent in reconding them in a peculiar cell, and thence transmitting them to the intestines, upon all occasions: These severals, I say, considered, it may be rationally inferred, that it is not only helpful to the guts in their excretions, but also in their fermentations; whereby the chyle is rendered not only fermentiscible in the blood, but also more fermentescent thereunto. Yet, sir, lest this lean meat should not satisfy your more delicate palate, I must advertise you, that • Apolog. de Ferment. p. 98. ↑ Glisson. Anatóm. Hepatis. the blood in these persons must needs be sparing, and therefore the lesser chyle may ferment it; especially considering, that their fermentations are but small, as appears by the smallness of their heat; and, therefore, pray do yourself the right not to expect an account of robust ones. Seventhly, The heart itself contributes much to the fermentation.> It is acknowledged by all, that the circulation of the blood, being a rapid motion through the indefatigable pulsation of the heart, adds much to the fermentation. We see that motion given to wine, ale, cyder, or cream of milk, though sufficiently fermented, will yet, without a new ferment, give a new fermentation. But, sir, lest you should mistake me, when I stumbled at an innate ferment in the heart, and yet stood upon it, that fermentation may be ascribed thereto, let me unbosom myself, that you may see what the heart contributes thereunto. First, The heart is as it were a cistern, into which the blood veins, milky veins, and water veins, or lymphæducts, by mutual consent, deposit their multiform juices. Secondly, It hath the force of a mill, by its quaquaverse fibres, continually busied in their constrictions and dilatations to grind and make small the more crassy particles of the juices. Thirdly, Of a mortar, wherein the more exact mixture of these different juices is highly promoted. Fourthly, Of a gin, expelling the blood sufficiently subacted, and then, to the further execution of its offices, but too too troublesome; and, by the way, the burden of the blood may be one cause of its pulsation; for it is said, if a live heart be taken out of the body, the prick of a pin will renew its pulsation. Fifthly, Of a pump to give motion, and, according to the sanguiterious ducts, to the several parts, distribution of this juice adapted to nutrition. Sixthly, of a loom, wherein the blood is fermented. Seventhly, Of a kind of philosophical furnace, wherein a spiritual Biolychnium is kindled; I intend only a heat perchance, caused only by the motion and fer. mentation aforesaid. Eighthly, Of a Pelican, to rarefy and exalt the vital spirits. Ninthly, Of an alembick, not vulgar, whereby the spirits receive a kind of separation, though yet they run with the blood, which being condensed in the refrigeratory of the habit of the body, as the learned Walæus expresseth it, are the more easily subject to the brain's philtration, and the nerves preservation. Tenthly, Of a potential philtre, whereby there is made such a segregation of homogeneous particles into their proper classes, as renders the blood much more obedient to the colatures and emunctories of the body; as rennet in the milk potentially separates the whey, and prepares it for an actual separation by the sieve; and, in chymical preparations, the acid liquor, or diluting a large quantity of weakening water, provokes a kind of fermentation, whereby the suspended atoms, in the strong menstruums, are precipitated, and so prepared for a more facile separation; so, that, indeed, all the engines, in nature's shop, depend mainly upon Walæus in Meth. Medend. the right tone, texture, and operation of the heart. From which it seems apparent to me, which yet I submit to clearer minds, that the heart is further serviceable to fermentation, and other offices of nature, than, meerly pump-like, to conciliate motion; which may be further confirmed, by the site of the heart in the center of the body; as also, by its firmest muniments, by which it is garisoned on its back by the spine, on its face by the sternum, on its sides by the ribs, under its feet by the diaphragm, and over its head by the canopy of the pyramidal thorax, and, lastly, by its buff-coat, the pericardium; and, which is not nothing, the curious fabrick, with various camerations, the retiform fibres, and various passages, the uniform procedure of nature, in the formation of the hearts of animals, whilst often it sports itself in the building of other parts, and its primogeniture, as appears by the Vesicula palpitans first formed in eggs, according to the renowned Harvey, the rudiment of the heart, and the blood's constant flux and reflux to and from the heart, even then when the liver and lungs, though famous bowels, are passed by unsaluted in the circulation of embryo's; as also nature's great care to supply the defective passages of those viscera by a foramen ovale in the septum of the heart, lest the intercourse of the blood with the heart should be impeded; which hole is yet afterwards precluded, when the infant is midwived into a new world. Much of this curiosity of nature, about the heart, seems utterly unnecessary, if it served only for motion; but we are sure that God and nature does nothing frustraneously. Neither am I yet satisfied, that the whole of the blood's motion is to be ascribed to the heart's pulsation; for Conringius affirms, that, in live dissections, the blood strongly circulates a long time after the left ventricle hath lost its pulse; yea, though the heart be taken out, yet presently is not the motion of the blood destroyed; which seems to be confirmed by the experiment upon frogs, which leap so nimbly, and swim so freely, after their hearts are exempted, that they cannot be known from unwounded frogs, that exercise in their company; the story whereof that most dexterous anatomist, Dr. Needham, hath published. Moreover, if a ligature be applied to a vein or artery, whereby the pulse is intercepted with the undulation of the blood also, yet the blood, beyond the bond, runs its course toward the heart; and which is so much the more strange, because it is the motion of a heavy body, contrary to its natural tendency, upward. Moreover, if the pulse of the heart were the only cause of the motion of the blood, why then is not the menstrual blood thrust into other parts, as well as into the uterine? Since the other parts, equally with these, receive the constant force of the heart's even pulsations and impartial distributions. Likewise we see, that the animal spirits in the nerves, with their juice, the lympha in its ducts, the chyle in its thoracicks, the seed in its seminals, the urine in the ureters, and the phlegm in its pituitary vessels are all in motion, without the force of any such De format. Fœtu. engine to give the origin thereto. Whereupon, I am apt to conjecture, that nature hath furnished several parts with an attractive power, the blood with fermentation, and several vessels with a kind of vermicular motion of their own, no doubt excited by the nerves, the porta with asinus in the liver, which serves for a pump, and the cava, or one part of it, with a pulsifick energy (by which blood is thrust into the right ventricle, as the learned Walæus asserts) by which the motion of humours is promoted; and consequently, that the rareness of the structure, unweariedness of the pulsations of the heart, &c. are designed to some higher ends, than merely, and as such, to give motion, though that it doth with an emphasis. Fourthly, How can spirits, both vital and animal, be prepared and separated without food, and frequent fermentations? R. 1. Whether there be a flux of animal spirits through the Genus nervosum seems yet not fully resolved; and, if no flux, then the waste is small, and a small reparation may supply a small waste. But, I confess, I understand not how narcotick fumes, nor redundant humours, restagnating in the brain, can cause an apoplexy, epilepsy, palsy, &c. in the whole body, if there be no flux of spirits from the brain; nor how the hurt from a coach in the seventh vertebre of the back, mentioned by great Galen, could cause a palsy in three fingers; nor why we anoint the vertebres of the back for palsics in the extreme parts, if there be no flux of spirits. 2. Supposing a flux of animal spirits through the nervous system, yet, according to the doctrine of famous Dr. Wharton,* much of the nervous juice, separated by the glandules, is returned by the veins and lymphaticks, and so not lost, though infeebled by its peregrination; and more yet deposited, according to Dr. Willis, the great reformer of physick, by the extremity of the nerves in the habit of the body, is again retrieved by the lymphaticks, which, serving in our abstinents little or nothing to assimulation, only somewhat to the cherishing of the implanted spirits, is the more plentifully returned, and so the loss, thus far forth, less considerable than ordinary. 3. It is apparent, that there is a decay of these spirits, as well as an obstruction, in most of these abstinents, as witnesseth their great inability to motion. 4. The fermentations, mentioned before, though small, may contribute something to the increase of these spirits for chymists know that there are few juices so insipid, so sterile, but, by the help of fermentation, may yield a not contemptible spirit. 5. Those spirits that pass from the brain to the extremity of the body, and thence returned, as before, by the lymphaticks, and that more forceably and plentifully, being reflected by the impervious cold and constipated skin, seem rather tired than exhausted, which may, by the small ferments aforementioned, the contritions, mixtions, and exaltations of the heart, and the perpetual motions of the scarlet liquor, be rarefied and volatilised, to do, at a dead lift, further good service. 6. It is De Glandulis, |