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 decay'd; 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 Pyrrhus,[299] who had but two in his Head. 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 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.[300] 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 Urnes 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 languish’d under the Disease of his Country, the Rickets; after which notwithstanding many have been become strong and active Men; but whether any have attain’d 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 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 King's Purse knows that the King's Evil grows more common. Quartan Agues are become no Strangers in Ireland; more common and mortal in England: and tho' the Ancients gave that Disease[301] 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 esteem’d new, will have but their time: However, the Mercy of God hath scatter’d 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, empty and bladder-like Guts, livid and marbled Lungs, and a wither’d Pericardium in this exuccous Corps: but some seemed too much to wonder that two Lobes of his Lungs adher’d 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, after a Cough of almost fifty Years, in whom all the Lobes adhered unto the Pleura,[302] and each Lobe unto another; who having also been much troubled with the Gout, brake the Rule of Cardan,[303] 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 Cattel; and Men who perish by Coughs die the Death of Sheep, Cats and Lions: and tho' Birds have no Midriff, yet we meet with divers Remedies in Arrianus against the Coughs of Hawks. And tho' it might be thought that all Animals who have Lungs do cough; yet in cetaceous Fishes, who have large and strong Lungs, the same is not observed; nor yet in oviparous 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[304] 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 cœlestis, Jupiter opulentus, 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 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, 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 Divination.
He was willing to quit the World alone and altogether, leaving no Earnest behind him for Corruption or After-grave, having small content in that common Satisfaction to survive or live in another, but amply satisfied that his Disease should die 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[305] Roots sprout more early, and at the fairest make seventeen Years of our Life doubtful before that Age. They that enter the World with original Diseases as well as Sin, have not only common Mortality but sick Traductions to destroy them, make commonly short Courses, and live not at length but in Figures; so that a sound Cæsarean[306] Nativity 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,[307] 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, 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[308] plain Words upon his Tomb. And this serious Person, tho' no minor Wit, left the Poetry of his Epitaph unto others; either unwilling to commend himself, or to be judg’d 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 outlast their Works, Posterity would find so little of Apollo on them, as to mistake them for Ciceronian Poets.