[869]———mox daturi progeniem vitiosiorem.
And yet with crimes to us unknown,
Our sons shall mark the coming age their own;
SUBSECT. II.—The Definition, Number, Division of Diseases.
What a disease is, almost every physician defines. [877]Fernelius calleth it an “affection of the body contrary to nature.” [878]Fuschius and Crato, “an hindrance, hurt, or alteration of any action of the body, or part of it.” [879]Tholosanus, “a dissolution of that league which is between body and soul, and a perturbation of it; as health the perfection, and makes to the preservation of it.” [880]Labeo in Agellius, “an ill habit of the body, opposite to nature, hindering the use of it.” Others otherwise, all to this effect.
Number of Diseases.] How many diseases there are, is a question not yet determined; [881]Pliny reckons up 300 from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot: elsewhere he saith, morborum infinita multitudo, their number is infinite. Howsoever it was in those times, it boots not; in our days I am sure the number is much augmented:
[882]———macies, et nova febrium
Terris incubit cohors.
No man free from some Disease or other.] No man amongst us so sound, of so good a constitution, that hath not some impediment of body or mind. Quisque suos patimur manes, we have all our infirmities, first or last, more or less. There will be peradventure in an age, or one of a thousand, like Zenophilus the musician in [883]Pliny, that may happily live 105 years without any manner of impediment; a Pollio Romulus, that can preserve himself [884]“with wine and oil;” a man as fortunate as Q. Metellus, of whom Valerius so much brags; a man as healthy as Otto Herwardus, a senator of Augsburg in Germany, whom [885]Leovitius the astrologer brings in for an example and instance of certainty in his art; who because he had the significators in his geniture fortunate, and free from the hostile aspects of Saturn and Mars, being a very cold man, [886]“could not remember that ever he was sick.” [887]Paracelsus may brag that he could make a man live 400 years or more, if he might bring him up from his infancy, and diet him as he list; and some physicians hold, that there is no certain period of man's life; but it may still by temperance and physic be prolonged. We find in the meantime, by common experience, that no man can escape, but that of [888]Hesiod is true:
Πλείη μὲν γὰρ γαῖα κακῶν, πλειη δὲ θάλασσα,