dence along with it, and may serve for eviction of whatsoever is contrary thereunto. Forasmuch as rectum eft index fui, & obliqui. Death, which is the fruit of old age, and the unavoidable receptacle of all living, is described to be just at the deor, by those symptoms that belong to the inftruments, either of the animal faculty, or of the vital; (as for those that belong unto the natural, they have very little or no certainty in this case.) Those that belong to the animal, have reference unto the brain, and the parts arifing from it; either as they are continued without the cranium, or ever the filver cord be loofed; or else as they are contained within the cranium, the golden bowl be broken. Those symptoms that belong to the vital faculty have reference unto the heart, and the parts arifing from it; as they ferve either for importation of the blood and fpirits, the pitcher broken at the fountain; or for exportation of the fame, the wheel broken at the ciftern. Now of all thefe in their order.

Or ever the filver cord be loofed.

The first thing that we must here make enquiry into, is what we are to understand by the cord; and we must be fure here alfo, as in all other parts of the description, to keep within compass of the allegory; and find out those parts of a man that are hereby reprefented. For he it is, that hath hitherto been

de

described unto us, as an old houfe greatly decayed and ruinated, but yet standing, by all the foregoing fymptoms; but now as an house falling down, which muft no longer remain, by this fymptom, and those three which immediately follow in this verse. And therefore these may very well be called, quatuor mortis concomitantia; the four attendants upon dying man.

The scripture maketh mention of the cords of a man, Hof. xi. 4. which although they are there to be taken in a moral sense, and so excentrical to what we are now about, yet they are a metaphor taken from the natural cords of a man, and may give fome light thereunto: for as love in all bodies politick (and confequently myftical) doth both draw and unite; fo in all bodies natural, the felf-fame offices are performed by thofe parts of which we are about to speak; for we must know, that all the several parts of man are not kept, and bound faft together, by fpells; nor are his feveral members moved feveral ways, as it were by magick art; the foul of man doth not by a bare jubeo caufe the reprefentation of outward objects, or the variation of the pofition of the feveral limbs, without the help of inftruments; but by the apt frame of the whole body, and the pliableness of the feveral parts, and the convenient pofition of all

* Cajetan.

the

the cords and pullies towards the appointed ends; we perceive outward objects, and move ourselves at pleafure, fo as that an artificial man, could there be in it the fame organs, and the fame difpofition of them all, together with an active power to put them in execution would have a like fenfe and motion with ourselves. The Chaldee paraphrase doth interpret this cord to the ligula linguæ, the string of the tongue; others interpret it to the spinalis medulla, the marrow of the back; others, to the nerves; others, to the outward tunicle of the nerves and marrow, which they have proper to themselves, for their own ftrength; befide the other two which they receive from the brain. All these have offered exceeding well, and without doubt have hit the truth, and being put together may feem to make the whole of what is here intended, which is the whole inftrument of fenfe and motion, after it hath proceeded out of the fcull, and as it is diftributed throughout the body; with all its coats and tunicles, with all its divifions and feparations. I mean, not only the spinal mar. row is here to be understood, (as principally it ought to be) but all the nerves arifing thencefrom, (both thofe feven pair, be they more more or lefs, that proceed from it, before it hath attained any of the spines; and thofe thirty pair, that proceed from the feveral vertebra of the neck, the back, the

loins, and the os facrum) and also the filaments, and fibres, and tendons, that proceed from all thofe nerves. The nerves and fibres muft in no wife be here left out, forasmuch as they do more apparently both unite and draw, than any other of the parts whatsoever. Job faith, thou haft fenced me with bones and with finews, Job x. 11. I compare these fences of a man, to those of an hedge; where the bones anfwer to the stakes in the hedge, making the substantial trunk of the body, unto which all the other parts are to be fastened and the finews or nerves to the binders of the hedge; which fasten and unite all the others parts to that trunk and as for motion or drawing, it is well known that there is none in all the body performed, (whether voluntary or natural) but by the influence of the animal spirits upon the nerves and fibres, and their contraction thereupon, in those several parts, into which they are inferted. Now, altho' all the feveral and innumerable filaments are to be accounted hereunto, yet, they are moft aptly expreffed in the fingular number, by funiculus argenteus, the filver cord, because they are but the continuation of the fame thing: The fibres being nothing else but the nerves divided and difperfed, and the nerves nothing else but the marrow in like manner separated, as so many arms and branches of the fame tree; they are

all

all one in their original, the brain; they are all one in their continuation for a long time, in the spine; they are all one in their colour, white; they are all one in their form, long and round; they are all one in their coats, having each the fame three tunicles; they are all one in their use, to convey the animal fpirits, and all this is an apt resemblance to a cord; to which also they are not unlike in their divifion, for then they are but as fo many wreaths, or wattles of the fame cord; and that which is moft obfervable to our prefent purpose, is, that by how much the more diftant they are from their original, by fo much the thinner and finer, the harder and more compact do they grow, like the feveral fmaller and better twisted ends of the fame cord.

It is called the filver cord, first from its colour, for it appears to the eye, of a white, fhining, refplendent beauty, bright as filver; and thus it is even when it is taken out of the body, after it is dead; but how much more admirable and glorious muft it needs be, while it remains in the body yet living, and actuated with abundance of moft refined fpirits, which continually afcend and defcend thereupon. An ancient and an admirable anatomift*, upon confideration of the great luftre and perfpicuity of it, compares it to the crystalline hu

Fallopius.

mour