I would fain see the Piss-Prophets of this Age deliver such a Judgement.

 

Liber II

Astrological Judgement 
upon Diseases

or

A methodical way to find out the cause, nature, symptoms and change of a disease, together with the parts of the afflicted, the exact time of recovery, or dissolutions by the decumbiture, amplified by examples.

The basis of the story was borrowed from Noel Duret, cosmographer to the King of France and the most excellent Cardinal, the Duke of Richlieu.

'Tis confessed in some places I have abbreviated him, in others corrected him; let another do the like to me. What I have done, I have done and am not ashamed the world should see it. Through the never-failing mercies of God, I had an opportunity put into my hand to finish his so much desired, so long wished for work; if there be any weakness in it, it is my own. If there be any excellency in it, give God the glory.

He that writes ignominy upon the backside of another man's book, never setting forth any of his own, let the name of ignominy be branded and not engraven upon his sepulchre. 

I would fain see the piss-prophets of this age deliver such a judgement of diseases by the urine; he that can do so, Erit mihi magnus Apollo. Why do I trouble my head with the physicians, whose convetousness or laziness, or both, or something worse will not suffer them to study those arts which are essential to their monopolised calling; but I will be silent, for their fall is approaching by reason of their pride. If he wrote true that writes that pride goes before a fall, and a haughty mind before destruction, my genius is too dull to commend my author, or to give him the thousandth part of his due praise. I desire to be censured by Dr Experience, who will give judgement without partiality, and I hope 'tis no disparagement to Monsieur Duret, that I deliver him in my own language. 

Chapter I

The definition of the word 'crisis', its use, cause, kinds, divisions and difference.

Crisis, according to Galen, is a swift and sudden change of any disease, whereby the sick is either brought to recovery or death, and sick man can be brought or nothing else, unless you will make him a beast of a man. For every swift and sudden change wherever it happens, whether in the Moon or the Air, or sick body, Galen plays the man and calls a crisis, and from this crisis is judgement given whether the sick be likely to live or die.

The word crisis is a Greek word which signifies to judge or discern, or pass sentence upon a thing; therefore, critical days are nothing else but days wherein a man may discern a disease, or give judgement upon it, be it good or bad. It matters not much; 'tis taken by a metaphor from the judicial court to the art of physick, because 'tis something like to please a man's cause for his life, and to labour acutely under a disease to be drwn by inimical accusers before the judgement seat, and to run the hazard of life with a cruel and hostile disease. 

Moreover, there are three things requisite to a judicial court: the accuser, the person indicted, and the judge. So likewise are there three things by which the art of physick consists, and by which every cure is perfected: the disease, nature and the physician, which is nature's servant, or at least should be so, and the accidents which manifest what the disease is, and stand as witness.

The cause of the crisis is twofold, inward and outward. The internal cause is taken from its own proper principle, if you will believe Hippocrates, and that is double or twofold; for either nature labours to expel the humour that causes the disease, or else the humour itself being drawn to a place and not fit for excretion by its own weight or quality, burdens nature and so breaks out. Hippocrates was but a man, and I am no more; a man saith he is troubled when he is in a fever, and the sign is horror, tremblings, running hither and thither throughout the microcosm, this is one internal cause.

Others there be. 'Tis no matter who that ascribe the efficient cause of the crisis to nature itself; nature if she be strong is a good physician for all diseases, and concocts the humour which causes the disease, and separates that which is good from that which is bad, and having done so prepares that which breeds annoyances for excretion, and at last makes a shift to cast it out.

The external cause of the crisis is caused by an alteration of the air, whence arises an alteration of the breath a man draws in, from cold or heat, from dry to moist, or the contraries to them both.

For Hippocrates in his sixth aphorism, and in his treatise De natura humana, speaks in downright dunstable language that heat and moisture in the body, moves forward the crisis; for diseases, some, saith he, come by ill diet, others by the air we draw in. 

So then, the diet as it breeds such and such humours in the body is internal, but the air we draw in is the external cause of the crisis. Who makes hours and days, and seasons in the year? Is it not the Sun who makes alterations in the air, in plants and living creatures? What is the reason that oysters are fuller at the Full Moon than at the New? To the number of oysters, join crabs and lobsters, nay the marrow in the body of man. is it not the Moon? A man, if he pleases, may say his right hand is his left, and a prating priest may preach his pleasure; let Dr Experience be judge. 

Now then, we have brought the matter to this purpose, that the universal cause of the crisis is in the influence of the heavens; for the celestial bodies, either by heat, light, motion or aspect, configuration, or all of them, or some of them, act not only in the four elements, but elementary bodies. For if they act in the one, they must need in the other, and then by consequence in man, which is but compounded of elements. 

The Earth is a great lump of dirt rolled up together, and by an only wise God hanged in the air. The stars are no more, neither is the Moon; only what metal the Sun is made of, I know not. 

If the bodies of men are elementary, composed of fire, air, earth and water. We must need participate in one measure or other of all these elements. The elements being contraries cannot always agree; hence comes the cause of health, sometimes of sickness, sometimes of death itself, and Aristotle was half of my opinion when he wrote these words, from the rain and dew of heaven both good and bad things are caused to bud.