The Major Works (English Library) (42 page)

The
Egyptian
Mummies that I have seen, have had their Mouths open, and somewhat gaping, which affordeth a good opportunity to view and observe their Teeth, wherein ’tis not easie 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 little better than to have been Tooth-drawer unto King
Pyrrbus
, who had but two in his Head.
⁴⁰
How the
Bannyans
of
India
maintain the Integrity of those Parts, I find not particularly observed; who notwithstanding 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
⁴¹
had so early mouldred those Rocks and hardest parts of his Fabrick, that a Man might well conceive that his Years were never like to double or twice tell over his Teeth.
⁴²
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 enquired into, altho 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 I have seen become
⁴³
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 encrease among the Inhabitants of
Rovigno
in
Istria
, I know not; yet scarce twenty Years ago Monsieur
du
Loyr
⁴⁴
observed, that a third part of that People halted: but too certain it is, that the Rickets encreaseth among us; the Small-Pox grows more pernicious than the Great: the Kings Purse knows that the King’s Evil grows more common.
⁴⁵
Quartan
Agues are become no Strangers in
Ireland
; more common and mortal in
England
: and tho the Ancients gave that Disease very good Words,
⁴⁶
yet now that Bell makes no strange sound which rings out for the Effects thereof.
⁴⁷

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,
⁴⁸
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 God 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,
Pandoras
Box would swell, and there must be a strange Pathology.

Most Men expected to find a consumed Kell,
⁴⁹
empty and bladder-like Guts, livid and marbled Lungs, and a withered
Pericardium
in this exuccous
⁵⁰
Corps: but some seemed too much to wonder that two Lobes of his Lungs adhered unto his side; for the like I had often found 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,
⁵¹
after a Cough of almost fifty Years, in whom all the Lobes adhered unto the Pleura,
⁵²
and each Lobe unto another; who having also been much troubled with the Gout, brake the Rule of
Cardan
,
⁵³
and died of the Stone in the Bladder.
Aristotle
makes a Query,
⁵⁴
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
⁵⁵
have not left so many Medicines in vain against the Coughs of Cattel; and Men who perish by Coughs dye the Death of Sheep, Cats and Lyons: and tho Birds have no Midriff, yet we meet with divers Remedies in
Arrianus
⁵⁶
against the Coughs of Hawks. And tho it might be thought, that all Animals who have Lungs do cough; yet in cetaceous
⁵⁷
Fishes, who have large and strong Lungs, the same is not observed; nor yet in oviparous
⁵⁸
Quadrupeds: and in the greatest thereof, the Crocodile, altho we read much of their Tears, we find nothing of that motion.

From the Thoughts of Sleep, when the Soul was conceived nearest unto Divinity, the Ancients erected an Art of Divination, wherein while they too widely expatiated in loose and inconsequent Conjectures,
Hippocrates
⁵⁹
wisely considered Dreams as they presaged 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 cælestis, Jupiter opulen-tus, Minerva, Mercurius
, and
Apollo
; in bad unto
Tellus
and the Heroes.

And therefore I could not but take notice how his Female Friends were irrationally curious so strictly to examine his Dreams, and in this low state to hope for the Fantasms 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
⁶⁰
his Sense was of good signification: for we live by the dead, and every thing is or must be so before it becomes our Nourishment. And
Cardan
, who dream’d that he discoursed with his dead Father in the Moon, made thereof no mortal Interpretation: and even to dream that we are dead, was no condemnable Fantasm in old
Oneirocriticism
,
⁶¹
as having a signification of
Liberty, vacuity from Cares, exemption and freedom from Troubles, unknown unto the dead.

Some Dreams I confess may admit of easie and feminine Exposition: he who dream’d that he could not see his right Shoulder, might easily fear to lose the sight of his right Eye; he that before a Journey dream’d that his Feet were cut off, had a plain warning not to undertake his intended Journey. But why to dream of Lettuce should presage some ensuing Disease, why to eat Figs should signifie foolish Talk, why to eat Eggs great Trouble, and to dream of Blindness should be so highly commended, according to the
Oneirocritical
Verses of
Astrampsychus
and
Nicephorus
, I shall leave unto your Divinaton.

He was willing to quit the World alone and altogether, leaving no Earnest behind him for Corruption or Aftergrave, having small content in that common satisfaction to survive or live in another, but amply satisfied that his Disease should dye with himself, nor revive in a Posterity to puzzle Physick, and make sad
Memento
’s of their Parent hereditary. Leprosie awakes not sometimes before Forty, the Gout and Stone often later; but consumptive and tabid Roots sprout more early, and at the fairest make seventeen Years of our Life doubtful before that Age.
⁶²
They that enter the World with original Diseases as well as Sin, have not only common Mortality but sick Traductions
⁶³
to destroy them, make commonly short Courses, and live not at length but in Figures; so that a sound
Casarean
Nativity
⁶⁴
may out-last a natural Birth, and a Knife may sometimes make way for a more lasting fruit than a Midwife; which makes so few Infants now able to endure the old Test of the River,
⁶⁵
and many to have feeble Children who could scarce have been married at
Sparta
, and those provident States who studied strong and healthful Generations; which happen but contingently in mere
pecuniary
Matches, or Marriages made by the
Candle,
⁶⁶
wherein notwithstanding there is little redress to be hoped from an Astrologer or a Lawyer, and a good discerning Physician were like to prove the most successful Counsellor.

Julius Scaliger
, who in a sleepless Fit of the Gout could make two hundred Verses in a Night, would have but five plain Words upon his Tomb.
⁶⁷
And this serious Person,
⁶⁸
tho no
minor
Wit, left the Poetry of his Epitaph unto others; either unwilling to commend himself, or to be judged by a Distich, and perhaps considering how unhappy great Poets have been in versifying their own Epitaphs; wherein
Petrarcha, Dante
, and
Ariosto
, have so unhappily failed, that if their Tombs should out-last their Works, Posterity would find so little of
Apollo
on them, as to mistake them for Ciceronian Poets.
⁶⁹

In this deliberate and creeping progress unto the Grave, he was somewhat too young, and of too noble a mind, to fall upon that stupid Symptom observable in divers Persons near their Journeys end, and which may be reckoned among the mortal Symptoms of their last Disease; that is, to become more narrow minded, miserable and tenacious, unready to part with any thing when they are ready to part with all, and afraid to want when they have no time to spend; mean while Physicians, who know that many are mad but in a single depraved Imagination, and one prevalent Decipiency;
⁷⁰
and that beside and out of such single Deliriums a Man may meet with sober Actions and good Sense in
Bedlam;
cannot but smile to see the Heirs and concerned Relations, gratulating themselves in the sober departure of their Friends; and tho they behold such mad covetous Passages, content to think they dye in good Understanding, and in their sober Senses.

Avarice, which is not only Infidelity but Idolatry, either from
covetous Progeny or questuary
⁷¹
Education, had no Root in his Breast, who made good Works the Expression of his Faith, and was big with desires unto publick and lasting Charities; and surely where good Wishes and charitable Intentions exceed Abilities, Theoretical Beneficency may be more than a Dream. They build not Castles in the Air who would build Churches on Earth; and tho they leave no such Structures here, may lay good Foundations in Heaven. In brief, his Life and Death were such, that I could not blame them who wished the like, and almost to have been himself; almost, I say; for tho we may wish the prosperous Appurtenances of others, or to be an other in his happy Accidents; yet so intrinsical is every Man unto himself, that some doubt may be made, whether any would exchange his Being, or substantially become another Man.

He had wisely seen the World at home and abroad, and thereby observed under what variety Men are deluded in the pursuit of that which is not here to be found. And altho he had no Opinion of reputed Felicities below, and apprehended Men widely out in the estimate of such Happiness; yet his sober contempt of the World wrought no
Democritism
or
Cynicism
, no laughing or snarling at it, as well understanding there are not Felicities
⁷²
in this World to satisfie a serious Mind; and therefore to soften
⁷³
the stream of our Lives, we are fain to take in the reputed Contentations of this World, to unite with the Crowd in their Beatitudes, and to make our selves happy by Consortion, Opinion, or Co-existimation:
⁷⁴
for strictly to separate from received and customary Felicities, and to confine unto the rigor of Realities, were to contract the Consolation of our Beings unto too uncomfortable
⁷⁵
Circumscriptions.

Not to fear Death, nor desire it,
⁷⁶
was short of his Resolution: to be dissolved, and be with Christ, was his dying ditty. He conceived his Thred long, in no long course of Years, and
when he had scarce out-lived the second Life of
Lazarus
;
⁷⁷
esteeming it enough to approach the Years of his Saviour,
⁷⁸
who so ordered his own humane State, as not to be old upon Earth.

But to be content with Death may be better than to desire it: a miserable Life may make us wish for Death, but a virtuous one to rest in it; which is the Advantage of those resolved Christians, who looking on Death not only as the sting, but the period and end of Sin, the Horizon and Isthmus between this Life and a better, and the Death of this World but as a Nativity of another, do contentedly submit unto the common Necessity, and envy not
Enoch
or
Elias
.