CENTURY IV. 175 



is friendly to life. As for the quickening of natural 

 heat, it must be done chiefly with exercise ; and 

 therefore no doubt much going to school, where they 

 sit so much, hindereth the growth of children; 

 whereas country people that go not to school, are 

 commonly of better stature. And again men must 

 beware how they give children any thing that is cold 

 in operation, for even long sucking doth hinder both 

 wit and stature. This hath been tried, that a whelp 

 that hath been fed with nitre in milk, hath become 

 very little, but extreme lively : for the spirit of nitre 

 is cold. And though it be an excellent medicine in 

 strength of years for prolongation of life ; yet it is 

 in children and young creatures an enemy to growth : 

 and all for the same reason, for heat is requisite to 

 growth ; but after a man is come to his middle age, 

 heat consumeth the spirits, which the coldness of 

 the spirit of nitre doth help to condense and correct. 



Experiments in consort touching sulphur and mer 

 cury, two of Paracelsus s principles. 

 There be two great families of things, you may 

 term them by several names ; sulphureous and mer 

 curial, which are the chemists words, for as for their 

 &quot; sal,&quot; which is their third principle, it is a com 

 pound of the other two ; inflammable and not in 

 flammable ; mature and crude, oily and watery. 

 For we see that in subterranies there are, as the 

 fathers of their tribes, brimstone and mercury ; in 

 vegetables and living creatures there is water and 

 oil : in the inferior order of pneumaticals there is air 



