These are to be interpreted in the following manner:
1. The Ascendent and the Lord of it signify the sick
man.
2. The middle of Heaven (the tenth House) signifies
his physician.
3. The sixth House and the Lord of it signify his
disease.
4. The fourth House and the Lord of it signify his
physic.
The consequences are these:
If there is evil in the Ascendent, or if the Lord of the Ascendent is
subject to adverse influences, the patient will do badly; but if these
are propitious, he will do well.
If there should be a benevolent or propitious Lord of the tenth House,
which signifies the physician, then his treatment will do the patient
good; but if the Lord should be evil, then the patient will be injured
by the treatment.
If there should be a powerful influence for good in the eighth House,
which is the House of Death, the patient will be quickly cured; but if
there should be an evil influence in this House, he will go from bad to
worse.
Similarly, if there is good fortune in the fourth House, which is the
House of Remedies, his medicine will do him good, but if evil fortune,
the medicine will make him worse.
If the Sign in the Ascendent should be mobile, and Luna should be in a
mobile Sign, such as Aries, Cancer, Libra, or Capricorn, and the Lord
of the Ascendent should also be in a mobile Sign, the illness will soon
terminate, either well or badly, especially if Luna is in swift motion.
If, however, it happens contrarily, it signifies a long illness,
especially if Luna is in a stable Sign, as Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or
Aquarius.
If the Lord of the Ascendent should be propitious, and free from
adverse influences of other Planets, and Luna likewise, the illness
will end favourably, especially if Luna and the Lord of the Ascendent
should aspect favourably the Lord of the eighth House, which is the
House of Death—that is, if they should be in sextile, and especially if
they should be in trine, to that House.
But if Luna, or the Lord of the Ascendent, or the Lord of the House
of Sickness, which is the sixth, should be combust and retrograde,
or if the Lord of the Ascendent should be in the House of Death in
conjunction with Mars or Saturn, both of them malevolent Planets, then
there is no hope.
Also, if the moon should be in conjunction with a propitious Planet in
the Ascendent, and should be moving forward and her light waxing, and
both should be free from adverse influences, then the disease will be
quickly cured; but if the moon should be in the House of Death, the
patient cannot be saved.
And generally, whenever Luna and the Lord of the Ascendent are subject
to adverse influences, it is a mortal sign, and we must fear death, or
relapse, or long illness; but when they are fortunately situated, and
aspected by well-disposed powers, as when Luna and the Lord are in the
Ascendent, then it is a good sign, and _ad vitam_.
But if the House of Death, and the Lord of the House of Infirmity,
or the Lord of the House of Death, are fortified by situation or by
aspect, especially when they aspect the moon adversely, then it is a
bad sign, and _ad mortem_; but when they are impeded or weakened, it is
a good sign.
Now the position of the heavenly bodies in the Houses of Heaven alters
from hour to hour, and a fatal disposition of them now may alter to a
favourable one in a couple of hours, and _vice versâ_. Luna, which is
now in the Ascendent, and therefore smiles upon the patient, will, in
fourteen or fifteen hours’ time, be in the eighth House, and condemn
him to death. It is manifestly of the utmost importance, therefore,
to fix upon the correct hour and minute for setting up the _tabula
cælestiarum_. It is to be feared, however, that in this matter
astrological physicians allowed themselves a good deal of latitude.
There are two fixed moments, one or other of which should be taken as
that on which the scheme should be erected. One of these is the moment
of birth; the other is the decumbiture.
It will be seen that the scheme of the nativity of Charles XII sets
forth the year, the month, the day, hour, and minute of birth,
and the scheme is erected accordingly, and admits of no doubt or
variation. There was, however, a process known to Astrologers by the
name of Rectification of the Nativity, a process the rules of which
are difficult to discover, but the practical result was to shift the
heavenly bodies from positions that were inconvenient to the Astrologer
to positions more suitable to his purpose. I should never myself
make an alteration of this nature, which does not seem to me quite
justifiable, but, emboldened by this established astrological practice,
I have ventured to make a trifling alteration in the scheme of nativity
that I have placed before you as that of Charles XII. As originally
erected, it referred not to the year 1682 but to the year 1594, and
to the moment of birth, not of Charles XII, but of a previous King
of Sweden, namely, Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North, and the
Bulwark of the Protestant Faith. In working it out, I found that by no
ingenuity and by no artifice could I make the predictions to be drawn
from this scheme of nativity fit in with the known career of that great
and successful commander. They suited, however, with such surprising
accuracy and appropriateness the career of his successor Charles XII
that I felt it was a pity to allow myself to be fettered, in applying
them to him, by a punctilio of needless scrupulosity. I did not venture
to take that liberty with the facts that astrologers were accustomed to
take, by altering the positions of the heavenly bodies in the Houses
of Heaven; I merely altered the date by less than a century, and
substituted the name of one King of Sweden for another.
In estimating the scheme of the heavens relating to the illness of
a patient, it is always advisable to compare it with the scheme of
his nativity. If that Planet which was Lord of the Ascendent in the
nativity is favourably placed and fortunately aspected in the scheme
of the decumbiture, and is neither combust nor retrograde, the patient
will be strengthened and live, and _vice versâ_.
These are the considerations that should weigh with a perfect
physician; but the authority I am now quoting from lived seven
centuries ago, and the world was very different then from what it is
now. It would appear that in those remote and benighted times there
actually were physicians who were not perfect, and to temper the
difficulties of astrological practice to these weaker brethren, they
were taught a method of procedure that is shorter and easier, but less
accurate. It will have been noticed how prominent a place is assigned
to the moon in the explanations that have been given, although in
setting up the scheme no separate mention was made of her, but she was
just lumped in together with the other Planets, which had presumably
equal value, except in as far as their power was subdued or enhanced by
their position. In the modified and abbreviated scheme that was drawn
up for the guidance of the general practitioner, the whole burden lay
upon the moon. It was recognised that a busy practitioner could not be
expected to have the correct positions of the Planets always at his
fingers’ ends; but he could scarcely be ignorant of the phase in which
the moon was, of whether she was waxing or waning, or even of the Sign
she occupied. Consequently, except to the very expert—to the dwellers
in the Harley Street and Wimpole Street of that day—the moon alone was
the guide to treatment and prognosis.
I must now go back for a moment, and call your attention to certain
_Facultates Naturales_ possessed by the human body, and governed by
the Planets. These are the Retentrix, the Coctrix, the Expultrix, the
Attractrix, the Vegatatrix and the Generatrix; and each has, of course,
its corresponding complexion. Retention, for instance, is favoured by
cold and drought, Digestion by heat and moisture, Expulsion by cold and
moisture, and Attraction by heat and drought.
It follows, of course, that retentive medicines, given to check fluxes
of any kind, should be administered either when Luna is in a sign that
is cold and dry, such as Taurus, Virgo or Capricorn, or when one of
these signs is in the Ascendent; and at such times retentive drugs
should be not only administered but prepared, for their virtues are
not in themselves, but are part of the celestial virtue communicated
from the celestial bodies, from which all virtues are derived. So that
retentive medicines, such as sugar of roses, diaciton and diapapaver,
should be prepared as well as administered when one of these cold
and dry signs is in the Ascendent, or when the moon is in one of
them. If, however, we wish to reinforce the expulsive faculty, as
for instance in constipation or amenorrhœa, the medicament must be
prepared and administered when Luna is in Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces,
or when one of them is in the Ascendent; for these Signs are cold and
moist. In this case we must be careful, however; for if a purgative
is given when the motion of Luna is retrograde, the expulsion will be
retrograde, and instead of purgation we shall cause vomiting; but if we
are so incautious and ignorant as to give purgatives when the moon is
retrograde in Leo, which has an aspect to the heart and blood, we shall
produce vomiting of blood.
Diseases of plethora are very dangerous when a man is taken sick upon
a full moon, and diseases of wasting are most dangerous when he is
taken sick upon a waning moon. Let me entreat you therefore to give
physic for inanition when the moon is near the full, and for plethora
when she has lost her light; and remember that a humour can scarcely be
diminished but when the moon is waning, nor increased except when she
is waxing.
It is very bad when, in the beginning of a sickness, the moon is in a
Sign of the nature of the peccant humour, as in the hot and dry Signs
Aries, Leo or Sagittarius, when the peccant humour is choler; the cold
and dry Signs Taurus, Capricorn or Virgo, when it is melancholy; the
hot and moist Signs Gemini, Libra or Aquarius, when it is blood; or the
cold and moist signs Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces, when it is phlegm.
Naturally, when she is in a fiery Sign, it is easy to amend a disease
of phlegm, but if choler abound, wait until she is in a watery Sign.
We see, therefore, how very important it is to consider the aspect of
the heavens before we begin our treatment; and though it is true that
patients do sometimes recover under the care of ignorant physicians who
take no account of these things, yet in such cases, says my authority,
the patient recovers by accident, and not by the skill of the
physician.
An additional reason for studying the motion of the moon in illness is
because this motion regulates the critical days. A crisis is defined as
a swift and vehement motion of a disease, leading to recovery or death.
Strictly speaking, those only are true crises which lead to recovery,
but inaccuracy and corruption have crept into the meaning, until some
authors enumerate six kinds of crisis, which I need not enumerate here;
but all authorities are agreed, and their agreement seems to me to
arise from everyone copying the words of his predecessor, that for a
true and perfect crisis six conditions must be fulfilled.
In the first place, the crisis must be complete, that is to say, the
whole of the _materia peccans_ must be evacuated; for instance, all the
bile in tertian fever, and all the phlegm in quotidian fever. If the
whole of the _materia peccans_ is not evacuated, it is evident that the
patient may relapse.
The second condition is that none of the peccant material should
remain. This is evidently quite as important as the first, that all of
it should be evacuated.
The third condition is that health must be completely regained, and
there must be no terrible accidents or pernecabilibus, such as running
of the eyes.
The fourth condition is that the crisis must be manifest; that is to
say, there must be a sensible evacuation of the _materia peccans_.
The fifth condition is that the crisis must make indication, and as to
the meaning of this, I have come, after long and careful study, to the
conclusions on another subject arrived at by my authority, and piously
expressed by him in the words, _Deus solus cognoscit, quia habet neque
caput neque caudam_.
The sixth condition is that the crisis must occur on a critical day.
The critical days are governed entirely by the motion and positions
of the moon. It is clear that there can be no crisis for good except
_materiâ peccante coctâ_, and it is evident that the _materia peccans_
cannot be digested in as short a time as two days; consequently the
first and second days of a disease cannot be critical. The third day
is intercadent, and the fourth is indicative, because, manifestly,
whatever happens on the fourth day will happen with exaggerated
force on the seventh. The fifth day again is intercadent, and of
no significance, nor is the sixth of any. The seventh is the first
critical day, for then the moon is in quartile to the decumbiture,
and is necessarily in a Sign of opposite nature in all respects to
that in which she was at the decumbiture. If she was in Aries at the
decumbiture, she will be on the seventh day in Cancer. Now, Aries
is hot and dry, Cancer cold and moist; Aries is masculine, Cancer
feminine; Aries diurnal, Cancer nocturnal. The quartile aspect is
thus thoroughly hostile, and whatever process Luna favours at the
decumbiture she will oppose when she reaches the quartile. At the
decumbiture she favoured the disease, for otherwise the disease would
not have occurred; at the quartile, therefore, she opposes the disease,
and makes for a favourable crisis.
The eighth day is neutral, the ninth intercadent, the tenth neutral,
and the eleventh indicative, for whatever happens on the eleventh
will happen with exaggerated force on the fourteenth, which is the
second and most critical day, for then the moon is in opposition to
the decumbiture, and with all her might counteracts all that took
place at the decumbiture. The next critical day is, of course, the
twenty-first, when she is again in quartile, and finally, between the
twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth she comes into conjunction. If the
disease has not been ended by crisis on one of the three critical
days, the reinforcement that it now receives from the conjunction of
the moon converts the acute disease into a chronic, and henceforth it
is governed no longer by the positions of the moon, but is regulated,
according to the same laws, by the sun. The next crisis will not take
place therefore for two months, when the sun will be in quartile to the
decumbiture.
Of course, the favourable or unfavourable character of the crisis
will depend largely upon whether, on the critical day, the moon is
favourably aspected by good Planets, or unfavourably influenced by bad
ones.
It will be seen that all of these influences and dates depend upon
the moment of the decumbiture, which is described as the first punct
of time of the invasion of the disease; and this, as Galen says, is
very hard to find. It is easy, indeed, to find the decumbiture in the
literal sense, that is to say, the time when the patient takes to his
bed; but when the beginning of the sickness is, that, says Culpeper,
is the question; ‘for a lusty stout man bears the disease longer
before he takes to his bed than a puny sickly man: a meer suspition of
sicknesse will send a faint-hearted man to bed; you may perswade him he
is sick whether he is or no. Notwithstanding, in most acute diseases,
as also in many others, as Falling Sickness, Palsies, Apoplexies, and
Pleurisies, ’tis an easy thing to find the precise time of the invasion
of a disease. The best opinion is that that moment of time is to be
taken in which a man finds a manifest paine or hurt in his body; for
instance, when a man hath got a Fever, usually the head akes certain
dayes before; this is not the Fever, but a messenger or forerunner of
the Fever; the true beginning is when a horrour or trembling invades
the Sick.’
Certain objections to these doctrines did not escape the notice of the
astrologers who taught them. ‘If,’ says one, ‘the crisis depends on the
motion of the moon and her aspect to the other Planets, what is the
reason, if two men be taken ill at one and the same time, that yet the
crisis of one falls out well, and not so the other?’ The reasons are
manifold. The virtue working is changed according to the diversity of
the virtue receiving; for you all know the sun makes the clay hard and
the wax soft, it makes the cloth white and the face black; so then, if
one be a child, whose nature is hot and moist, the other a man in the
prime of life, whose nature is hot and dry, and the third an old man,
whose nature is cold and dry, the crisis works diversely because their
natures are different.
Secondly, in the Spring time, diseases are most obnoxious to a child,
because his nature is hot and moist. A disease works most violently
with a choleric man in Summer, with a melancholy man in Autumn, and
with a phlegmatic man in Winter.
Thirdly, if at the decumbiture the moon was aspected by Mars, whose
nature is hot and dry, if the disease be of heat and drought it is
mightily aggravated: not so if it be cold.
Fourthly, the complexions of the patients may be different; the one hot
and dry, the other cold and moist. If the disease be hot and dry, it
will not be so violent upon a cold and moist body as on a hot and dry.
Fifthly, their nativities may not agree. If the moone be aspected by
Saturne or Mars at the nativity, the disease is dangerous; not so
if she be aspected by Jupiter or Venus; or Saturn may be Lord of one
nativity and not of the other, and then he may hurt the one and not
the other, for the Devil will not hurt his own. If you can possibly
get the nativities, you shall not err. ‘For example, I know,’ says my
authority, ‘three children born at one and the same time. At five years
of age they all three had convulsion, whereby they were all three lame
of one leg, the boyes on the right, and the girl on the left. At 14
they dyed altogether on one and the same day of the small-pox.’
To us, with our present knowledge, and requirements of evidence, and
our ways of thought, all this appears such a farrago of tomfoolery
that it is difficult to understand how it can have been seriously
entertained by men of ordinary intelligence; and yet we know that it
was in fact believed by the rarest intellects of their time, some of
them, like Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus, among the rarest intellects
of all time; and it is an interesting exercise to try and carry our
minds back and put ourselves as far as we can in the position of our
forefathers. We shall then find it easy to understand why the system
was maintained, and not difficult to discover how it originated. The
first is explained by the overwhelming power of authority, the last by
the belief that was overthrown by Copernicus.
In the first place, we must imagine ourselves living on an earth that
is the centre of the universe, and that to the earth, and especially
to its human inhabitants, the rest of the universe is subservient. The
universe was created to serve a certain purpose, ‘the diapason closing
full in man.’ That anything could exist for any other purpose than the
service of mankind was not conceived, was probably not conceivable, by
our forefathers. At a time almost within the memory of some now living,
one of our leading philosophers declared that in the world there is
nothing great but man. If he had expressed all that was in his mind,
no doubt he would have said in the world there is nothing great but
Scotchmen; but taking the declaration as he made it, it summarises
effectively the attitude of our ancestors towards the cosmos. It was
made for their benefit. To them there was no greater paradox than that
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear,
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste (mark the word) its sweetness on the desert air.
This being so, of what use are the heavenly bodies? The overpowering
and incalculable value to man of the sun is evident enough. By its
daily transit through the sky it makes the difference between the day,
the time of man’s activity, and night, the time of his repose. By its
annual transit through the Signs of the Zodiac it makes the differences
among the seasons, and so regulates his food supply, whether animal or
vegetable, his comfort, and his welfare in a thousand particulars. Here
we have the root of the whole matter; but to understand it fully we
must remember that the sun was but one of seven Planets, all resembling
him in so many important respects that it was impossible not to
attribute to them powers corresponding with his, if different from his.
So that, if the sun had power over the affairs of men, so had the other
Planets; if his power varied according to the Sign he occupied, so did
theirs; if his power altered with his height above the horizon, so did
theirs. In a world in which natural law was unknown, and everything
seemed to happen by chance, the mind clutched at anything that offered
an explanation of the ways in which things happen. Here was an
explanation ready to hand, and needing only study and interpretation.
The moon is evidently complementary to the sun. Her power is greatest
when she is in opposition, and at this time she antagonises the sun
by producing a colourable imitation of daylight at night, and thus
interfering with his power of regulating light and darkness. This is
naturally taken as an instance of a general law, that opposition means
antagonism, a meaning that is now become fixed and general; and since
opposition is but one of several differences of position, it follows
that every such difference—trine, quartile and sextile—means some
difference of influence. Again, the moon, as far as her power extends,
antagonises the sun, and works against him. But the sun is manifestly
and immensely beneficial to the human race, and is a benevolent power;
consequently, the moon is malevolent and injurious. Both sun and moon
are but samples and members of the family of Planets, and whatever
characters they possess must be shared by the rest of the family.
The other Planets, therefore, must be benevolent or malevolent in
their degree, and must exercise their powers, as the sun and moon do,
according to their position above the horizon, that is in the Houses of
Heaven, or in the Signs of the Zodiac.
As the sun undoubtedly by its position and movements produces the
seasons, and as the moon has faculties and qualities of like kind,
though inferior in power, it follows that she too regulates some
natural phenomena of minor importance to the seasons. Such minor
natural phenomena are displayed by the weather; and the belief that the
moon regulates the weather is the one astrological doctrine that still
displays vitality. The other Planets are irregular in their movements,
being now rapid, now slow, now direct, now retrograde; clearly,
therefore, their influence will be exerted upon those great natural
events that are irregular and occasional in their incidence; and thus
it is that Saturn produces intense frost, inundations and tempests;
that Mars regulates thunder and lightning and the invasion of pirates;
that Venus brings beneficial floods, rains, and mists; that under
Mercury occur droughts and squalls, and so forth.
All these catastrophes have their effects on the welfare and fortunes
of men, and consonantly with the belief already stated, were
conclusively presumed to take place for no other purpose than to
affect, in one direction or other, the lives and fortunes of men. It
would be strange if, after being credited with these powers for this
purpose, the Planets were not further endowed with the power of causing
those catastrophes, equally inexplicable otherwise, and still more
affecting human welfare, plague, pestilence, and all other diseases.
In order to produce diseases, the Planets must influence the humours
by whose defect or excess diseases were produced; and since _entia
non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem_, the Planets could
not influence these humours except by themselves possessing and
distributing the same elementary qualities, heat, cold, drought, and
moisture, that characterise the humours. This doctrine was the easier
to establish since it was already known that these four qualities
pervade all things in nature. The very elements themselves, out of
which all things are compounded, are but embodiments of the four
elementary qualities in their four possible combinations. Fire is hot
and dry, Air is hot and moist, Earth is cold and dry, Water is cold
and moist. When it is remembered that the four humours are similarly
compounded, yellow bile being hot and dry, blood hot and moist, black
bile cold and dry, and phlegm cold and moist, it becomes evident, even
if it were not already certain from the universal prevalence of these
qualities, that corresponding pairs must be possessed by the several
Planets to give them those powers over disease that they undoubtedly
exercise. This useful method of the _circulus in probando_ is not the
only device that our forefathers have bequeathed to us, and that still
serves our purposes with all its original efficacy.
When we have got thus far, the remaining doctrines of medical astrology
follow naturally by the development and elaboration of those we already
possess, aided by further analogies, more or less far-fetched, and by
chance coincidences, such as that already mentioned which led Guy de
Chauliac to attribute the great plague of 1345 to the conjunction of
Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in Aquarius in March of that year.
We should take a very superficial view of Astrology, however, if we
failed to recognise that beneath all its strange doctrines, and under
all its monstrous assumptions, lies the insatiable craving of the human
mind for explanation. Every event that happens before us throws down an
irresistible challenge to us to explain it. We are so constituted that
we cannot rest until it is explained; but we are also so constituted
that we are apt to accept as sufficient anything that purports to be
an explanation, even if it rests upon no reasonable ground, or even
if it is a mere verbal explanation that explains nothing. We have
discarded Astrology as a garment that we have outgrown, even as the
snake wriggles itself out of its skin, and the crab withdraws itself
from a rigid envelope that is too small for it; but can we assure
ourselves that we have outgrown and discarded the mental carapace that
renders such beliefs as Astrology possible? Do not logicians still
teach doctrines every bit as absurd as the doctrines of Astrology? And
even in Medicine itself, do we never take that for an explanation that
is no explanation? Before we can cast stones at the Astrologers, have
we no windows of our own to guard? Let those answer who explain aphasia
by calling it a loss of memory for words; who explain ataxy by calling
it loss of the power of coordinating movements; who explain a delusion
by discovering a lesion in the brain; who explain feeble mindedness
by hereditary influence; who explain hysteria entertained in middle
age by some sexual irregularity committed in youth; or who explain an
hypothetical increase of appendicitis by an hypothetical increase in
the consumption of meat. Surely we have every right to despise those
who attributed all acute diseases to the influence of the moon, and all
chronic diseases to the influence of the sun, for we know with assured
knowledge that acute diseases are in fact produced by intestinal
stasis, and that chronic diseases are due to that blessed combination
of words—alimentary toxæmia.