THE whole secret of health, said my father, beginning the sentence
again, depending evidently upon the due contention betwixt the radical
heat and radical moisture within us;—the least imaginable skill had
been sufficient to have maintained it, had not the school-men
confounded the task, merely (as _Van Helmont_, the famous chymist, has
proved) by all along mistaking the radical moisture for the tallow and
fat of animal bodies.
Now the radical moisture is not the tallow or fat of animals, but an
oily and balsamous substance; for the fat and tallow, as also the
phlegm or watery parts, are cold; whereas the oily and balsamous parts
are of a lively heat and spirit, which accounts for the observation of
_Aristotle_, “_Quod omne animal post coitum est_ triste.”
Now it is certain, that the radical heat lives in the radical moisture,
but whether _vice versa_, is a doubt: however, when the one decays, the
other decays also; and then is produced, either an unnatural heat,
which causes an unnatural dryness——or an unnatural moisture, which
causes dropsies.——So that if a child, as he grows up, can but be taught
to avoid running into fire or water, as either of ’em threaten his
destruction,——’twill be all that is needful to be done upon that
head.——