SUBSEC. 2. The Definition Number Division of Diseases.

What a Disease is, almost every Physician defines. Fernelius calleth it an Affection of the body, contrary to Nature. Fuschius and Crato an hinderance, hurt, or alteration of any action of the body, or part of it. Tholosanus, a dissolution of that league which is between body and soule, and a perturbation of it: as health the perfection, and makes to the preservation of it. Labeo in Agellius, an ill habit of the body, opposite to nature, hindering the use of it. Others otherwise, all to this effect.

How many diseases there are, is a question not yet determined; 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 daies I am sure the number is much augmented:

macies, & nova febrium Terris incubuit cohors.

For besides many Epidemicall diseases unheard of, and altogether unknown to Galen and Hippocrates, as Scorbutum, Small pox, Plica, Sweating sickness, Morbus Gallicus, &c. We have many proper and peculiar almost to every part. No man amongst us so sound, of so good a constitution, that hath not some impediment of Body or Minde. Quisque suos patimur manes, we have all our infirmities, first or last, more or lesse.

There will be peradventure in an age, or one of a thousand, like Zenophilus the Musician in Pliny, that may happely live 105. yeares without any manner of impediment; A Pollio Romulus, that can preserve himself with wine and oyle; A man as fortunate as Q. Metellus, of whom Valerius so much braggs; A man as healthful as Otto Herwardus, a Senator of Ausborrow in Germany, whom 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 Saturne and Mars, being a very cold man, could not remember that ever he was sick.

Paracelsus may bragge, 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 certaine period of mans life: but it may still by temperance and physick be prolonged. We finde in the meane time, by common experience, that no man can escape, but that of Hesiod is true:

Πλείη μὲν γὰρ γαῖα κακῶν, πλείη δὲ θάλασσα, Νοῦσοι δ’ ἀνθρώποισιν ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ, ἠδ’ ἐπὶ νυκτὶ Αὐτόματοι φοιτῶσι.——

Th’ earth’s full of maladies, and full the sea, Which set upon us both by night and day.

If you require a more exact division of these ordinary Diseases which are incident to men, I refer you to Physicians; they will tell you of Acute and Chronick, First and Secundary, Lethales, Salutares, Errant, Fixed, Simple, Compound, Connexed, or Consequent, belonging to parts or the whole, in Habit or in Disposition, &c. My division at this time (as most befitting my purpose) shall be into those of the Body and Minde.

For them of the Body, a briefe Catalogue of which Fuschius hath made, Institut lib. 3. sect. 1. cap. 11. I refer you to the voluminous Tomes of Galen, Areteus, Rhasis, Avicenna, Alexander, Paulus Ætius, Gardonerius: And those exact Neotericks, Savanarola, Capivaccius, Donatus Altomarus, Hercules de Saxonia, Mercurialis, Victorius Faventinus, Wecker, Piso, &c. that have methodically and elaborately written of them all. Those of the minde and Head I will briefly handle, and apart.