shuddering. But when it enters with more of a flood it overcomes the
fibres by its heat and reaches the spinal marrow, and burning up the cables
of the soul sets her free from the body. When on the other hand the body,
though wasted, still holds out, then the bile is expelled, like an exile
from a factious state, causing associating diarrhoeas and dysenteries and
similar disorders. The body which is diseased from the effects of fire is
in a continual fever; when air is the agent, the fever is quotidian; when
water, the fever intermits a day; when earth, which is the most sluggish
element, the fever intermits three days and is with difficulty shaken off.

Of mental disorders there are two sorts, one madness, the other ignorance,
and they may be justly attributed to disease. Excessive pleasures or pains
are among the greatest diseases, and deprive men of their senses. When the
seed about the spinal marrow is too abundant, the body has too great
pleasures and pains; and during a great part of his life he who is the
subject of them is more or less mad. He is often thought bad, but this is
a mistake; for the truth is that the intemperance of lust is due to the
fluidity of the marrow produced by the loose consistency of the bones. And
this is true of vice in general, which is commonly regarded as disgraceful,
whereas it is really involuntary and arises from a bad habit of the body
and evil education. In like manner the soul is often made vicious by the
influence of bodily pain; the briny phlegm and other bitter and bilious
humours wander over the body and find no exit, but are compressed within,
and mingle their own vapours with the motions of the soul, and are carried
to the three places of the soul, creating infinite varieties of trouble and
melancholy, of rashness and cowardice, of forgetfulness and stupidity.
When men are in this evil plight of body, and evil forms of government and
evil discourses are superadded, and there is no education to save them,
they are corrupted through two causes; but of neither of them are they
really the authors. For the planters are to blame rather than the plants,