humour will abound again and prevail the more: And that especially, when melancholy humours bring the hurt.

But some have said, that fully to drive away these humours, the virtue of laxatives, without their body, is sufficient. For the power of laxatives operates more when freed from the lump of body than joined with it; and this is that which Avicenna saith in his first canon in the chapter, Of the disposition of purging medicines.

Then we must apply such medicines outwardly, whose property it is, to temper the essence of the member and its constitution; and to hinder that the scattered reliques of the superfluous humour be not received of that member, as terra sigillata, bole armenick, and such things use to do, either through some operation that is in them, or for the similitude and equality of complexion, for that it cools what is too hot, and heats what is too cold. Which Galen thinks very likely in the oil of roses, as Avicenna saith in his first canon Of the operation of particular medicines.

This accident, I say, of greyness, renders a man more deformed, and is more apparent than any other in the body.

I have studiously searched its cause and original. And wise physicians have laid down the cause and remedy of these accidents in their treatise of preserving beauty: For at the approach of these, * deformity is caused, and through their delay in the time of manhood is a man's comeliness. For this age by Avicenna is called the age of beauty.

CHAP.

Theophrastus in his character of Flattery hath these words; What a reverend grey beard you have got? And yet you, if any man, considering your years, have your hair black. And to be long in growing grey was ever accounted an argument of a lusty and vivid old age. Therefore effeminate men were as careful to hide their grey hairs, as women their wrinkles; as Plautus and Martial do testifie.

CHAP. IV.

Of the wrinkles of the skin, paleness, rotten phlegm, bleareyedness, shortness of breath, and other things, which especially bave relation to the body.

WE have already spoken of the causes of one accident, namely, greyness; now we must treat of the wrinkles of the skin, paleness and other things, which especially have relation to the body.

These evils betide men sometimes before the stated time, sometimes at their due season.

Wrinkles of the skin are contracted either from the flesh extenuated, whence there remains a loosning of the skin; or

From the want of flesh, and hence comes the shriveling of it. And Aristotle saith in the end of his fifth book Of Animals: that this comes through the putrefaction of the humour. For he saith, that wrinkling which befals bodies. is unlike to slickness: because if the vapour be concrete, thence is caused slickness, and it putrefies not, nor do wrinkles arise.

This accident often happens to them that are as it were burnt up in the fire, and do handle things belonging to the forge, as is evident in the smith's trade: For the use of these things dries exceedingly, and makes the face pale, and full of wrinkles. Therefore those dames that are over-careful of their beauty, use to turn away their face from the fire. But those things which remove the wrinkling of the skin you shall find hereafter in that chapter, wherein the things are declared, which use to render the skin delicate for youthful beauty, cleanness, and redness.

Paleness also according to some is a companion of old age, which falls out in young men from superfluous and re

dounding phlegm; in old men from want and diminution of blood and spirits, or from infection of the blood.

Diminution of the blood and spirits is from the diminution of the natural moisture; because the root, and as it were the fountain of it, is in the blood, principally in that of the heart, and secondarily in that which passeth through the veins and members: The blood being diminished, the spirits are diminished also, which abide in the blood as in their subject. And blood is restored by those things, which refresh the innate moisture; and the blood being augmented, the spirits are made more lively.

Plenty of rotten phlegm, filthy spitting, and bleareyedness are accidents of age, which happen from an unnatural moisture; and especially phlegmatick: And that moisture flows sometimes from the superfluity of the fourth digestion, and is cured by things purging, consuming and drying up phlegm, as we shall hereafter teach.

Those things especially help bleareyedness which swim in the sea, and which live in the air.

Those things are a cure for filthy spitting, which purge and open the breast, as Diaïrews and diaprassium. Purging of phlegm from the head and stomach, conduces very much towards the cleansing of ropy phlegm; although in young and growing persons these things happen sometimes from the superfluity of the blood.

Insomneity, if I may so speak, shortness of breath, anger, disquiet of mind, are accidents of age: among which

Weakness of breathing happens through the straitness and coarctation of the passages of the lungs, which is caused either by too much dryness, or excessive moisture.

But we must remedy this evil or accident by the help of those medicines, that the wise have ordered to be taken, in their treatise of diseases which befal the instruments of breathing. For Avicenna in the same treatise affirms, that

saffron

saffron hath a property to open and refresh the instruments of breathing.

Want of sleep, disquiet of mind and anger, befal old men and the decrepit; and sometimes young men, from melancholick fumes ascending to the brain, as also hindring ibe organs of the senses. And therefore in their books of rerament it is ordered by physicians, that old men avoid phlegmatick, and likewise sowre meats. Horehound very well prepared helpeth this disposition, and to eat sallet of lettuce strowed with spice, as Galen saith, according to Avicenna in his chapter, Of Sleep.

But against anger, want of sleep and talkativeness, let the operation and action of the soul, joy and mirth, and ether delectable things be made use of.

CHAP. V.

Of Weakness of Strength, and Faculties of the Soul,

WEAKNESS of strength and faculties is an accident of

Dic age.

Infrenity of strength proceeds from a strange and unnatural moisture softening the nerves; or

From over much dryness, whereby the nerves are contracted, and therefore weakned; or

From the concussion of the nerves, as it often falls out in soldiers exercising the sharp and dangerous feats of war. For I have seen many men vigorously striving in the comba, who being thereby weakned, lost the garland of the

When the weakness hath its original from dryness, that medicine is useful, whose root is of the Indian plant.

When from moisture, meat made of the vegetable medi cine may be profitable for the hurt strength.

But the weakness of the faculties sometime arises from the moisture superfluous,

Sometime from it deficient.

These faculties although they may seem to be many; as the appetitive, digestive and sensitive, because they have got many names; yet the faculty is truly one, as Johannes Damascenus affirms. And because this one faculty is wont to perform different offices in different members, it is called by divers names.

But by what ways these faculties may be recreated, and being weak may be strengthened, I will shew hereafter in the chapter, Of repairing the faculties.

The hurt of the senses is an accident of sense, which of ten falls out even in young men.

This sometimes happens in the occult,

Sometimes in the manifest organs of the senses.

When these hurts are made in the manifest organs, they may be cured in the same manner, as the wise have prescribed in the proper chapters of those hurts.

When this hurt happens in the occult instruments, it is made in three parts of the brain, wherein the animal power doth operate, namely in the fore, middle and hind part, which parts by Avicenna are called the ventricles of the brain.

In the hind part oblivion and remembrance is made by the soul. Of which things royal Haly speaks in his first discourse of his theory, saying, "That old age is as it were the house of forgetfulness.

But Seneca affirms the contrary, namely, that when a man grows old, if he have formerly well exercised the instrument of memory, he will not be of a less memory, than when he was a young man. Whence it happens that by long exercise of one instrument, the force and property of

another