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 part of his Fabrick, that a Man might well conceive that his Years were never like to double or twice tell over his Teeth.1 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, although I seem to find few Incisors or Shearers, yet the Dog Teeth and Grinders do notably resist those Fires.2

1 Twice tell over his teeth, never live to threescore years. 2 In the MS. Sloan. 1862, occurs the following paragraph:— "Affection had so blinded some of his nearest relations, as to retain some hope of a postliminious life, and that he might come to life again, and therefore would not have him coffined before the third day. Some such verbiasses [so in M.S.], I confess, we find in story, and one or two I remember myself, but they lived not long after. Some contingent reanimations are to be hoped in diseases wherein the lamp of life is but puffed out and seemingly choaked, and not where the oil is quite spent and exhausted. Though Nonnus will have it a fever, yet of what diseases Lazarus first died, is uncertain from the text, as his second death from good authentic history; but since some persons conceived to be dead do sometimes return again unto evidence of life, that miracle was wisely managed by our Saviour; for had he not been dead four days and under corruption, there had not wanted enough who would have cavilled [at] the same, which the scripture now puts out of doubt: and tradition also confirmeth, that he lived thirty years after, and being pursued by the Jews, came by sea into Provence, by Marseilles, with Mary Magdalen, Maximinus, and others; where remarkable places carry their names unto this day. But to arise from the grave to return again into it, is but an uncomfortable reviction. Few men would be content to cradle it once again; except a man can 'lead his second life better than the first, a man may be doubly condemned for living evilly twice, which were but to make the second death in scripture the third, and to accumulate in the punishment of two bad livers at the last day. To have performed the duty of corruption in the grave, to live again as far from sin as death, and arise like our Saviour for ever, are the only satisfactions of well-weighed expectations."

In the Years of his Childhood he had languished under the Disease of his Country, the Rickets; after which notwithstanding many have become 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 increase 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 though the Ancients gave that Disease1 very good Words, yet now that Bell makes no strange sound which rings out for the Effects thereof.2

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 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

1 'AσpaλÉσTATOS Kal phïσTos, securissima et facillima.-Hippocrat. Pro febre quartana raro sonat campana.

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 withered Pericardium in this exuccous Corps: but some seemed too much to wonder that two Lobes of his Lungs adhered unto his side; for the like I have 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,1 and each Lobe unto another; who having also been much troubled with the Gout, brake the Rule of Cardan,2 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 dye the Death of Sheep, Cats, and Lyons: and though 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, although we read much of their Tears, we find nothing of that motion.

1 So A. F.

2 Cardan in his Encomium Podagra reckoneth this among the Dona Podagra, that they are delivered thereby from the phthisis and stone in the bladder.

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, Hippocrates1 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.

1 Hippoc. de Insomniis.

Some Dreams I confess may admit of easie and feminine Exposition: he who dreamed that he could not see his right Shoulder, might easily fear to lose the sight of his right Eye; he that before a Journey dreamed 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 signify 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 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 mementos of their Parent hereditary. Leprosy awakes not sometimes before Forty, the Gout and Stone often later; but consumptive and tabid1 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 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, 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,

1 Tabes maxime contingunt ab anno decimo octavo ad trigesimum quintum.-Hippoc.

2 A sound child cut out of the body of the mother

3 Natos ad flumina primum deferimus sævoque gelu duramus et undis.