CHAP. VI.

Of the Hurt of the inner Senses and the Brain.

SINCE I have already explained almost all the causes of age and old age, as also the hurts of the exterior senses; now we must treat of those kind of hurts, wherewith the senses residing in the brain are affected.

Which

• Here sense seems comprehensive of reason. And this old hypothesis of various faculties, and their as various seats, bears a most harmonious concent to reasons and the newest anatomick phænomena. For neither do I think faculties unnecessarily multiplied in this place; nor yet their receptacles unduly assigned them.

If the author's imagination, cogitation of memory, that is, the moderns common sense, judgment and memory, had been the same faculty, he had such skill in the several phases of these luminaries (as Dr Smith in his portraicture of old age calls the faculties of man's soul) that he would never have parcelled an individuum into many distinct species by apparency. For we may remember, that in the foregoing chapter he likes not distinguishing between the appetitive and digestive faculty, but thinks them one. And since reason as well as so great authority countenanceth this triplicity of faculties, I shall take leave to dissent from two learned men, a ́ physical divine and a theological physician, i. e. Dr. Reynolds in his treatise of the passions, and the forecited Doctor Smith; and embrace the old opinion.

Were there not a defect in one faculty when another is perfect in its operations, I should think many the same one faculty; but experience showing one perfect, when at the same moment another is defective, I take such as distinct. We may indeed refer in gross all faculties of man to the soul, and so make them one. But if according to common acceptation, seeing and hearing be distinct, and those faculties differ, that operate by differing organs, we shall be of the author's judgment, when we consider the regions assigned each faculty.

The Evisceration of the brain shows us various ventricles near the origination of the nerves. Now the nerves being the inlets of all ideas, it's not unlikely that the ventricles are the receivers. But whether in the ventricles or in the parenchymous part of the brain these sensible ideas be concocted into other notions, or where the soul keeps her elaboratory of reason, I am not sʊ absolute

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Which come to pass for two causes, and are known three ways, as Avicenna saith in his third canon, in his chapter of the Hurt of the Senses.

They are known by three ways, that is, by three kinds of signs, which are not signs of diseases, that hinder sense, to wit, of the permutation of sense, of the alienation of it, of folly, of madness, of a broken memory, and of a depraved imagination:

But I mean those for signs, which are not truly diseases, but happen as hurts in the senses, yet are reckoned among Cseases.

When we say [in the senses] understand by senses, the instruments wherein the soul operates sense.

Whereas before we said, that this hurt was produced by two causes:

One of them is that which happens on the score of the rational soul when it is weakened. For the intellect being hurt, and as it were roving upon all manner of thoughts, the internal sensations do deviate: But while health is pre

served

sbachute in usu partium as to be able better to determine, than according to the probability of this hypothesis. For

Consider the eye, the principal negotiator for the imagination, it hath its visory nerves in the foremost place, assigned to imagination: But its motory terves are near the middle or seat of judgment, nay the pathetick nerves dare Lot cast a glance without judicious leave. In the very middle or place of dgment are the nerves, which be the moderators of the countenance and the tengue, the trust indices of discreation and understanding. Then the auditory nerves are placed behind, and seem to carry their ideas to the cell of memory, the proper receptacle of audibles. Behind these indeed come other harves; but they are only mancipia rationis, and do obsequiously put in execntime the dictates of the higher powers.

Now if after this anatomical account imagination, judgment and memory improve or impair according to the good or hurt that the fore, middle or hind part of the head receive, we may as rationally conclude on the seat of each facairy, as Galen did on the motory of the hand, when he cured its lost metes by application to the upper part of the spine.

served in man, no hurt falls on the intellect, nor therefore on the sense.

Another cause is, when in a sound man some hurts befal the senses, which are not made on the score of the rational soul alone, but on the score of those instruments, which by Avicenna are called the ventricles of the brain, without which the soul is neither able to imagine, nor discern, nor remember.

And the regimen contrived in this epistle, will easily instruct a man to remove such hurt, to preserve the faculty, so as to discern more subtilly, and to remember aright, also how to defend that no hurtful thing do fall into these cells or ventricles of the brain.

From these things it may appear to your Clemency, by whatmeans our forefathers being soundly wise obtained clear sharpness and force of intellect, able to pierce into the secrets of things: because, namely, they observed the health not only of their body, but the regiment of the three instru ments of the head; and made use of the properties of certain things, which afterward they altogether kept secret, lest they should come to the hands of the unfaithful.

And that this is possible, easily appears. The prince of philosophers in that book which he published to gratifie the request of Alexander, saith plainly, "That nothing is "difficult to the power of understanding, and that all things are* possible in a way of reason." And in the secrets of Hermogenes, according to Aristotle, it is said, "That the

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chief, true and perfect good is a clear and full light of un"derstanding." And therefore Seneca said, "That divine "seeds were disseminated in humane bodies," namely, sense and understanding. Now if he that hath these seeds be a good husbandman, things, like their original, will grow up;

and

* Our author hath made a large progress towards the making of this good in his book Of the wonderful power of art and nature.

and if a bad one. he produces no other thing than what a barren field doth yield.

I have also found this, That there is an admirable virtue placed in plants, animals and stones: Which is partly hidden from the men of this age; from the property of which things philosophers have obtained a clearness of understanding.

As for what concerns the memory, the signs which show the damages of a hurt memory, as the son of Abohaly writes, are

When the sense of a man is safe, and the imagination of things and forms in* sleep and waking is sound; if remembrance be not easie, the memory is hurt. And then

If what a man hath invented formerly, he be not able when he hath occasion for it, to call it to mind, and the imagination be safe, it is very likely the memory is hurt, and that the fault lies in the hind part of the head.

But the signs of the cogitation, that is, of the middle parts being hurt, are these;

If there be no impediment in the memory, and if a man speak those things that ought not to be spoken, and fear those things which he ought not to fear, and think that to be good which is very hurtful, and judge that may be hoped which it is not lawful to hope for, and acts things not to be acted, and enquires into things which ought not to be enquired into, and if he can call to mind whatsoever he pleases, then the hurt is in the cogitation, that is, the middle part of the brain.

Finally, signs of a hurt imagination are these; namely, VOL. IV.

C

If

Hippocrates in his book, Of Dreams, takes very rational presages as well as diagnosticks of the state of man's healthe from the dark visions of the night; and so a man may deal in oneirocriticks without danger of superstition or iew of Necromancy,

If a man's memory and talk be as they ought to be: if he contradict not the things which he did himself; if he speak not those things which seem contrary to reason; if he imagine not things not sensible; if he collect many things; if while he sees particulars he see falsely, namely, water, fire, and the like; if he imagine weakly concerning the forms of things in sleep and waking, then the hurt is in the imagination and forepart of the brain.

If two or three of these things be complicated, then the hurt is in two or three parts, that is, in the recesses of the

brain.

And when any of these things inclines to diminution, the disease is from cold; if to permutation, it is from heat.

But some have thought that the defect and diminution of these operations arises from the diminution of the substance of the brain.

I have diligently collected the cure of these hurts from the tables of the parts of the head, which the son of the prince Abohaly published in his book, Of the support of the Art of Physick. And besides, I have laid down this way of cure how it must be used, in the end of this epistle; and there you shall find most fit medicines for to cure this foresaid accident.

For especially for this accident, and in the second place for others, I composed this epistle at the perswasion of two wise men in Paris.

For not only the aged, but even young men for want of regiment, and through ignorance of certain things, as is daily manifest, being made in a manner blind, are miserably hurt.

And now we have finished the first part of this epistle, concerning speculative knowledge: We must next speak of operative or practical knowledge.

CHAP.