Two Medico-Philosophical Discourses: On Fermentation

...innermost parts. Nature has finally yielded, and allowed us to gaze upon the world's secrets. She is no longer more known to herself than she is to us. We now see what love reigns in the high mountains, and what flame boils down light fluids into marble, and from where the earth fosters the beginnings of new metals in her fertile embrace. We see why the earth opens her riches in the warm spring and flashes with native purple original: ostro; a reference to the deep red or purple color of spring flowers.

We see which soft west winds breathe seeds into pregnant Vesta Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, here represents the Earth itself. We see how Iris the rainbow, having left the arch of the clouds and her seat in the sky, delights to move in our own waters. We understand why Ceres the goddess of grain, representing the fermentation of grain into beer, when submerged in rivers and mixed with the Water-Nymphs, begins to swell. We see what wars the fiery Bacchus the god of wine, representing the spirit of fermentation in wine moves, what rages he stirs up, and how he celebrates his wild rites inside the storage casks.

What Vulcan the god of fire and the forge, from the deserted furnaces of Sicilian Etna, rouses gentle fires through the human body? Indeed, we see what spirit moves the human limbs. We see from where, on one side, a purple shower waters the veins, and on the other, a milky shower the "milky shower" refers to chyle, the nutrient-rich fluid processed by the digestive system and transported by the lacteal vessels. We see what cause commanded the returning rivers of blood to flow back to their sources in a constant motion a direct reference to William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood, published roughly thirty years before Willis's work.

We see what blind fires hide in the veins, and what flame lurks in the internal organs to stir up fever. We see what mixes cold with heat, and by what treaty the different zones of the body come together. We see what releases the Plague from the hellish gap of the Furies and commands it to spread, arming the winds with poison.

We see what the prophetic liquid is that washes the kidneys, and the nature of the smell from the chamber pot original: matulae; uroscopy, the diagnostic examination of urine, was a central part of Willis's medical practice. This is a scent that even he did not once disdain, for whom the basin of conquered Idumea Idumea is the Latin name for Edom. This is a biblical allusion to Psalm 60:8: "Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe." The poet suggests Willis rules over the "washpot" of medicine as a king rules a conquered nation breathed out balsams.

All things lie open. Even the craftsman who impiously brought stolen fire to mankind a reference to Prometheus stealing fire from the gods did not know his own offspring better than we know these things. We have traveled around the world of our art. Science has passed beyond the indignant Gades modern Cadiz, once considered the Western limit of the world and ancient Thule the mythical furthest northern land.

Happy is he who was able to know the causes of things! original: Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas; a famous line from Virgil's Georgics, often used to praise scientific discovery
He is sacred to Nature and to the Sun-God Apollo! The Delphic laurel longs to embrace his brow and his radiant temples.
The flames will spare that man whom Hermes the god associated with alchemy, chemistry, and medicine, with his sacred arts,