Part 10 (1/2)

+ In the poet Dante's description.

# i.e. ”by six persons.”

$ Morta, the deity of death or fate.

When men's faces are drawn with resemblance to some other animals, the Italians call it, to be drawn .

draughts death makes upon pined faces, and unto what an unknown degree a man may live backward.

Though the beard be only made a distinction of s.e.x, and sign of masculine heat by ,* yet the precocity and early growth thereof in him, was not to be liked in reference unto long life. Lewis, that virtuous but unfortunate king of Hungary, who lost his life at the battle of Mohacz,<9> was said to be born without a skin, to have bearded at fifteen, and to have shown some grey hairs about twenty; from whence the diviners conjectured that he would be spoiled of his kingdom, and have but a short life; but hairs make fallible predictions, and many temples early grey have outlived the psalmist's period.+ Hairs which have most amused me have not been in the face or head, but on the back, and not in men but children, as I long ago observed in that endemial distemper of children in Languedoc, called the ,# wherein they critically break out with harsh hairs on their backs, which takes off the unquiet symp- toms of the disease, and delivers them from coughs and convulsions.

The Egyptian mummies that I have seen, have had their mouths open, and somewhat gaping, which afford- eth a good opportunity to view and observe their teeth, wherein 'tis not easy to find any wanting or decayed; and therefore in Egypt, where one man practised but one operation, or the diseases but of single parts, it must needs be a barren profession to confine unto that of drawing of teeth, and to have been little better than tooth-

*+ The life of man is threescore and ten.

# See .

drawer unto King Pyrrhus,* who had but two in his head.

How the banyans of India maintain the integrity of those parts, I find not particularly observed; who not- withstanding have an advantage of their preservation by abstaining from all flesh, and employing their teeth in such food unto which they may seem at first framed, from their figure and conformation; but sharp and corroding rheums had so early mouldered these rocks and hardest parts of his fabric, that a man might well conceive that his years were never like to double or twice tell over his teeth.+ Corruption had dealt more severely with them than sepulchral fires and smart flames with those of burnt bodies of old; for in the burnt fragments of urns which I have inquired into, although I seem to find few incisors or shearers, yet the dog teeth and grinders do notably resist those fires.

In the years of his childhood he had languished under the disease of his country, the rickets; after which, notwithstanding many have become strong and active men; but whether any have attained unto very great years, the disease is scarce so old as to afford good observation. Whether the children of the English plantations be subject unto the same infirmity, may be worth the observing. Whether lameness and halting do still increase among the inhabitants of Rovigno in Istria, I know not; yet scarce twenty years ago Monsieur du Loyr observed that a third part of that people halted; but too certain it is, that the rickets increaseth among us; the small-pox grows more pernicious than the great; the king's purse knows that the king's evil grows more common. Quartan agues are become no strangers in

* His upper jaw being solid, and without distinct rows of teeth.

+ Twice tell over his teeth, never live to threescore years.

Ireland; more common and mortal in England; and though the ancients gave that disease* very good words, yet now that bell+ makes no strange sound which rings out for the effects thereof.

Some think there were few consumptions in the old world, when men lived much upon milk; and that the ancient inhabitants of this island were less troubled with coughs when they went naked and slept in caves and woods, than men now in chambers and feather-beds.

Plato will tell us, that there was no such disease as a catarrh in Homer's time, and that it was but new in Greece in his age. Polydore Virgil delivereth that pleurisies were rare in England, who lived but in the days of Henry the Eighth. Some will allow no diseases to be new, others think that many old ones are ceased: and that such which are esteemed new, will have but their time: however, the mercy of G.o.d hath scattered the great heap of diseases, and not loaded any one country with all: some may be new in one country which have been old in another. New discoveries of the earth discover new diseases: for besides the common swarm, there are endemial and local infirmities proper unto certain regions, which in the whole earth make no small number: and if Asia, Africa, and America, should bring in their list, Pandora's box would swell, and there must be a strange pathology.

Most men expected to find a consumed kell,<10> empty and bladder-like guts, livid and marbled lungs, and a withered pericardium in this exsuccous corpse: but some seemed too much to wonder that two lobes of his lungs adhered unto his side; for the like I have often found

* [Greek omitted], securissima et facillima.--+ Pro febre quartana raro sonat campana.

in bodies of no suspected consumptions or difficulty of respiration. And the same more often happeneth in men than other animals: and some think in women than in men: but the most remarkable I have met with, was in a man, after a cough of almost fifty years, in whom all the lobes adhered unto the pleura, and each lobe unto another; who having also been much troubled with the gout, brake the rule of Cardan,* and died of the stone in the bladder. Aristotle makes a query, why some animals cough, as man; some not, as oxen. If coughing be taken as it consisteth of a natural and voluntary motion, including expectoration and spitting out, it may be as proper unto man as bleeding at the nose; otherwise we find that Vegetius and rural writers have not left so many medicines in vain against the coughs of cattle; and men who perish by coughs die the death of sheep, cats, and lions: and though birds have no midriff, yet we meet with divers remedies in Arria.n.u.s against the coughs of hawks.

And though it might be thought that all animals who have lungs do cough; yet in cataceous* fishes, who have large and strong lungs, the same is not observed; nor yet in oviparous quadrupeds: and in the greatest thereof, the crocodile, although we read much of their tears, we find nothing of that motion.

From the thoughts of sleep, when the soul was con- ceived nearest unto divinity, the ancients erected an art of divination, wherein while they too widely ex- patiated in loose and in consequent conjectures, Hippo- crates+ wisely considered dreams as they presaged

* Cardan in hisreckoneth this among the , that they are delivered thereby from the phthisis and stone in the bladder.

+ Hippoc,

alterations in the body, and so afforded hints toward the preservation of health, and prevention of diseases; and therein was so serious as to advise alteration of diet, exercise, sweating, bathing, and vomiting; and also so religious as to order prayers and supplications unto respective deities, in good dreams unto Sol, Jupiter coelestis, Jupiter opulentus, Minerva, Mer- curius, and Apollo; in bad, unto Tellus and the heroes.

And therefore I could not but notice how his female friends were irrationally curious so strictly to examine his dreams, and in this low state to hope for the phantasms of health. He was now past the healthful dreams of the sun, moon, and stars, in their clarity and proper courses. 'Twas too late to dream of flying, of limpid fountains, smooth waters, white vestments, and fruitful green trees, which are the visions of healthful sleeps, and at good distance from the grave.

And they were also too deeply dejected that he should dream of his dead friends, inconsequently divining, that he would not be long from them; for strange it was not that he should sometimes dream of the dead, whose thoughts run always upon death; beside, to dream of the dead, so they appear not in dark habits, and take nothing away from us, in Hippocrates' sense was of good signification: for we live by the dead, and everything is or must be so before it becomes our nourishment.

And Cardan, who dreamed that he discoursed with his dead father in the moon, made thereof no mortal in- terpretation; and even to dream that we are dead, was having a signification of liberty, vacuity from cares, exemption and freedom from troubles unknown unto the dead.

Some dreams I confess may admit of easy and femi- nine exposition; he who dreamed that he could not see his right shoulder, might easily fear to lose the sight of his right eye; he that before a journey dreamed that his feet were cut off, had a plain warning not to under- take his intended journey. But why to dream of lettuce should presage some ensuing disease, why to eat figs should signify foolish talk, why to eat eggs great trouble, and to dream of blindness should be so highly com- mended, according to the oneirocritical verses of As- trampsychus and Nicephorus, I shall leave unto your divination.