Twentieth Century History of Findlay and Hancock County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, Part 143

Author: Jacob Anthony Kimmell
Publication date: 1910
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1189

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One of man's most anciently rooted beliefs comes to light again in this volume: An enemy's courage is in his heart, eat his heart and acquire his courage. It is but a step to apply

this doctrine to the different organs of animals and the fc: tions of such organs.

" The stones and udders of beastes being well digested & nourish much, but the stones are better with their moysms the udders cold and flegmaticke, they both doe increase seer! . generation." Thus is added one more to the already long la of those who anticipated Brown-Sequard by generations

Coghan's list of birds, included in the chapters on fo. was of especial interest to me, and a very instructive one ". from it we learn that he and his contemporaries knew of. .. used as food, " Fesaunt, Partrich, Wood Cock, Pigeons, T ... tle Doves, Queales." We see moreover, that this schoolmar physician believed that " Queales " furnished the meat reis- by Jehovah for the Israelites while they wandered upin .. desert. We also find that in England, small birde, such : sparrows, were employed for food, as they are to-day : southern and middle Europe, i. e., starlings, blackbirs lapwings, moor hens, wagtails, robin red-breast, larks. ! are birds which most of us nowadays would not only scom: touch as food, unless driven to it by dire distress, but wi" feel a pity that such useful and genial species should be kil- to so little purpose; many game birds are included in Cogha: list, such as geese, swan, mallard, teal, shoveller, wige": plover, and so also many which are quite beyond the pale civilized beings-herons, cranes, " buttorns " (bitterns). 0) exotic species, long acclimatized, in England, the peacock, a: another, introduced surely not more than half a century .. fore the Haven of Health was written, the turkey, are bi: mentioned. No one can tell whether Coghan was person?' familiar with all the birds in this ample list, or not; we c: see, however, that in some respects his ornithology was re much worse than that of White of Selbourne fame, for th- latter believed that swallows hibernated in swamp mud dori. each winter, while the former had a most fantastic concepti : of the zoologic relations of the puffin. Let him tell us abc this bird: "There is also a kind of fish called a l'už: which in respect that it liveth altogether in the water, mar , accounted a fish; whereas otherwise considering that it feathered and doth flie, as other foules doe, it may seeme tab- flesh, except that you would account it as a Syren, or merncz- den, that is halfe fish and halfe flesh." Perhaps this was : book knowledge. Who knows?

That England, an island, and a maritime nation, utilize: to the utmost its fresh-water, littoral, and deep-sea fishes. 32: knew them well, is abundantly attested by the list of file given in this book. In this list of thirty-nine fishes, the: are many which I never heard of, and many others known : me by name only. In addition to this notable list one mas add oysters, mussels, shrimps, crabs, lobsters and cockles.

The plants given for foods and medicines make a bt. enumeration, there being over one hundred, not counting th: plant products, fruits, nuts and spices. These various ve .- tables, fruits, and condiments would betoken, inferential ;. a considerable degree of luxury, yet outside of quite circum- scribed city and castle circles, all was rough, rude. az.

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ors, the prototype of our Western barbecue. Negative evi- nce is frequently as interesting as positive; in this long t of vegetable products, compiled and elaborated with evi- nt care, no mention at all is made of the now almost cos- politan American products, the potato and Indian corn, obably because then they were only becoming known.

From a medical point of view the key to the whole book is e quotation on the title page; though much of the context the various chapters may seem silly to us, there still runs rough all of the fabric woven by Coghan, a warp of admir- le instruction as to diet, drink, and other factors in the eservation of health. In his descriptions of the cooking of ods he shows that the primitive custom of cooking meats d vegetables in earthen vessels still held in England., As e reads his directions about various articles of diet, unex- cted facts come to light. It appears that violets were then ed as spinach is to-day; one is surprised to find that he ms to have, though something of a bon vivant himself, a v opinion of bacon ; this may have been because the finished duct then was far from what it is to-day.

Astrologie lore crops out when he writes under the caption " cibus ": " Shell fishes be at the best when the moon in- :aseth as the Poet Horace noteth."

That customs are tenacious of existence, notwithstanding it they be transported across wide seas, and through spaces time, is shown by the use then, and now, of rice, milk, and namon, all mixed together.

Dr. Coghan's experience made it clear to him that different lividuals are suited each to his own kind of exercise or or. He also carefully differentiated between exercises use-

for different parts of the body. Thus he especially com- nds " tenis," perhaps because Galen had done so, or had at st recommended a game that Coghan called " tenis," and ich may have been like modern hand ball.

The extended division on " cibus " is a forceful reminder, parts at least, that dietetic wisdom did not begin with us I our experimental laboratories. Let us read what Coghan s about the quantity one should eat: "That it be according the nature of him that eateth, and not always according appetite. For the temperate stomacke only (which is : to bee found) desireth so much as it may conveniently

est. Contrariewise the hot stomacke doth not desire so 'h as it may digest. The cold stomacke may not digest so th as it desireth. Wherefore, the surest way in feeding, > leave with an appetite, according to the old saying, and eep a corner for a friend." Surely there is wisdom and 1 advice in this, even though the same may have been said y times before, and since.

1 several places there is expressed a decided preference fowl, domestic or wild. He sings the praises of jaunt " this way : " Fesaunt exceedeth all foules in sweet- and wholesomeness, and is equall to a Capon in nourish- but is somewhat dryer, and is of some men put in a meane een a henne and a partrich. It is a meate for Princes

His classification of diets, you will surely agree with me, is not without humor :

Full diet is much enough, Mean diet is enough in a mean, .Slender diet is little enough.

There must have run a streak of the epicure through this physician, for he waxes warm over the praises of a good cook and good cooking; " A good cooke is a good jewel and to be made much of, modo fit vir bonus," and this is exemplified again when he writes, " because cookery is part of physicke and a good cooke (as Dr. Broad saith) is halfe a physitian."

When Coghan advises " Poor Schollers " that " Great sup- pers and late suppers must bee banished from all healthful houses," mayhap he had companies like this in mind. If by chance we eat too much despite his advice, we can find conso- lation and a present relief in his suggestion that "if thou feel that thou hast eaten too much, arise, goe thy way, cast it out of thy stomacke, and take thy rest, and it shall ease thee, so that thou shalt bring no sickness into thy body."

Last fall a cowboy said to me as I was on a cattle drive, " I believe it does a man good to get drunk once in a while, say once a month," a notion much older than I, at the time, realized, for it is fully amplified in this book, when it says : "Yet I read in Arnoldus upon Schola Sal. that surfetting and drunkenness is sometimes expedient, because thereby we fall to vomit, whereof ensueth cleansing of the stomacke, and preventing of many ill diseases of long continuance." This notion is not, however, to the satisfaction and approval of Coghan, who once more shows sound sense in matters dietetic when he quotes, with approval, his admired medical forebears :

But to procure vomit, through excessee and drunkenness, as it is ungodly, so it is beastly; and doth more hurt the stomacke, the braine, the brest, and all parts of the body, than it doth profit.

Much as he seemed to have valued wine in moderation and to have condemned it in excess, his opinion of a total abstainer is unique, which I will read to you : " And this is the cause (as I thinke) why men by nature so greedily covet wine; except some od Abstemius, one amonge a thousand perchance degenerate, and is of a doggish nature, for dogges of nature doe abhorre wine."

Mingled with his directions how to drink, and how to choose strong drinks, are indications of his notions of physiology, and theories of disease. Thus he says:

That is to say we ought to drink moderately, so that the stomacke be not hurt thereby, nor drunkennesse caused; for much abundence of drink at meales drowneth the meat eaten, and not onely letteth convenient concoction in the stomacke, but also causeth it to pass faster than nature requireth, and therefore engendreth much flegme, and consequently rheumes, and crude- nesse in the veines, debility, and slipperinnesse of the stomacke, continuall flux, and many other inconveniences to the body, and members.

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There are many curious sayings in his discourse on milk, which would be of keen interest if read in extenso; but we will have to content ourselves with an excerpt or two. Milk, ac- cording to him, is blood twice concocted, and it is of great use for " them that bee wasted, or in a consumption, or be leane." For woman's milk he has the highest praise only : " Yet common experience proveth that womans milke sucked from the breast is without comparison best of all in a con- sumption. Wherof a notable example was shewed of late yeares in the old Earle of Cumberland, who being brought to utter weakeness by a consuming Fever, by means of a womans sucke together with the good counsaile of learned Physitians, so recovered his strength, that before being destitute of heires male of his owne body, he gate that most worthy gentleman that now is inheritour both of his fathers vertues and honour."

While Coghan gives extended space and much attention to strong drinks, and is decidedly not a total abstainer, he also is loud in his praises of water as a beverage; passing over all of this, though it be of real interest, let us read what his tests of a good water are: " First by the lightnesse, for the lightest is best. Secondly by little skim or froth in boyling. Thirdly by drenching of linnen clothes in the water, and laying the same to dry, for that which is soonest dry, sheweth the best water."

This being a modest and polite gathering, and the reader a bashful man, the chapter on Venus will have to be passed over most hastily ; Coghan's humor comes to the surface in it, more than in any other one in the book. To digress a moment I may say that in speaking of fishes, he plays on words, and says, " And the tongue of a carp is very pleasant to carping Ladies." Likewise under the head of trout he is again face- tious. "This fish by nature loveth flattery; for being in the water it will suffer itselfe to bee rubbed and clawed, and so to bee taken. Whose example I would wish no maides to follow, lest they repent after claps."

One reads with amusement the following disapproval of early marriages :

that the woman at twelve yeares of age, and the man at four- teene, are marriageable, which thing is the cause that men and women in these dayes, are both weake of body, and small of stature; yea in respect of those that lived but forty years agoe in this land; much more then in comparison of the ancient in- habitants of Britaine, who for their tallnesse of stature were called Gyants.

The extraordinary sexual capacity of the house sparrow of England must long have been current knowledge in that period, for Shakespeare speaks of it in his plays, and Coghan mentions it in these words :

And this is the cause why such as use immoderate Venus be short lived, and as the Sparrowes, through incontinency, consume themselves.

Along a similar line of thought he cautions against the use of sparrows as food because " they stirre up Venus, especially the Cocke sparrow." Having shown that there are dangers in

worshiping too devotedly at the shrine of Venus, he also r. marks on the evil effects of being continent.

Perhaps it will be useful to this meeting to learn how : abate carnal lust :

Last of all to conclude these meanes whereby to abate cari lust, I will recite certaine examples gathered out of our Enpsy Chronicles of some men in time past, who supposed all chas ... to consist in single life. Elphlegus, Bishop of Winchester, upon him Duntanes a Monkes apparell, that hee might there" avoid both the fire of concupiscence and the fire of hell : Petrock an hermit of Cornewall, was faine every night from crowing of the cock to the spring of the morning to stand mat -. in a pit of water to abate the movings of his flesh, yet could :: never have remedy of that disease, untill he went on pilgrimme to Rome and lerusalem. S. Aldelme Abbot and Bishop of Main- bury, when hee was stirred by his ghostly enemy to the since !! the body, would hold within his bed by him a faire malden s long time as hee might say over the whole Psalter, to the inte" to doe the more torment to himselfe and his flesh. These cz (as you see) as holy as they seemed, were yet captives to Cupa and could hardly get loosed out of his bands, or whether they were loosed at all, it may be doubted .....

His views, on the other hand, of the beneficial results of .: ercising this primal function are not without interest: "F- it procureth appetite to meate, and helpeth concoction, maketh the body more light, and nimble, it openeth the pir- and conduits, and purgeth flegme, it quickneth the mit." stirreth up the wit, reviveth the senses, driveth away sadness madnesse, anger, melancholy, fury."

It is touching to witness the extreme solicitude this g. old chap had for his students and scholars. Thus he st: that to abate concupiscence the best, in his judgment, "is :- a man to keep himself out of the company of women."

One naturally asks, while and after reading this book, w. sort of a physician this man was. We have seen, through to quotation from his biography, that he was esteemed a gr. physician. Can we find evidence of this in his writings? it: cannot be very critical in this attempt, for the avowed purp * of the book in hand, clearly put forth in many places, is al . the lines of prophylaxis, and hence it can hardly be expecte": show the writer's merits as a clinician.

There was, in Coghan's time, really no science of any st. much less any systematized knowledge of medicine which under the most liberal construction, could be called a seitter of medicine. While the germs of our so-called present-3 science of medicine were developing at that time, there by: been little or no advance to speak of in the study of medicit. especially in anatomy and physiology, from the third cento .. on to about the time of Coghan's life. He was clearly a f lower of Galen, in so far as one can judge from his therape: tics; he used simples, and mentions nowhere in his discour -. any inorganic as a medicine, though he knew of Paracelsus specifically mentioning him on page 180, and presuma. knew of his views and of his strong predilection towards sal and other chemical agents. Moreover we can feel furti .: confident of his admiration of, and faith in, Galen, sinir quotes the latter most extensively; he also quotes numer .. other older medical writers, being familiar with such parts

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ve thought of the teachings of his own immediate medical edecessors, and contemporaries, we can be sure that he was t misled by the false notion that drugs were a sine qua n, though some words of his would imply that he did think edicine was indispensable; he had, unquestionably, great ith in the medical art of his day, but he also clearly dis- rned that there is such a thing as the vis medicatrix natura. is book shows in itself, and in its thesis, his appreciation of e surpassing importance of prophylaxis, a thing redounding ry much to his credit, when we consider the state of medical owledge at his period. If, before reading the Haven of ealth, one had forgotten all about the humoral theory as ex- unded by Hippocratic physicians and the temperament pory as held by followers of Galen, he would soon be re- nded of these ancient beliefs, by page after page of Coghan's itings. There is, however, less of the humoral theory in the ok than of Galen's theory of temperament. Almost every- ere one finds that Coghan, in describing foods, carefully res the degree of heat or cold, and of moist or dry. " Mal- ves are hot and moist in the first degree," whereas caraway s hot and drie in almost the third degree."

'Concoction " was a well-worn word with him as it was with ny of his contemporaries and successors. What we should ' was digested he says is " concocted," and as we have al- dy seen, his conception of the secretion of milk has to be pressed by the same word; that is, " milk is made of bloud ice concocted." His knowledge of the character of different ts of certain foods was hazy, and naturally often incorrect. r example he mistook the thermo-coagulable albuminoid of Ik for a second kind of cream.

What we term physiology was with him non-existent; never- less he tries to explain numerous different physiological cesses. On page 279 we have the following example, to ..

ow to enter more deepely into the nature of mankinde

shall understand, that as every living creature doth feed, and the meat received is altered and changed three times, that is ay, in the stomacke, liver, and parts before it nourish the v, and as every concoction hath his superfluity, or excrement, the stomacke ordure, the liver urine, the veines sweate.

'his may sound strange, yet it is simple when compared 1 his explanation of sleep: "for here is shewed by what nes sleepe is caused. That is, by vapours and fumes rising 1 the stomacke to the head, where through coldnesse of the ne, they being congealed, do stop the conduits and wayes he senses, and so procure sleepe."

he book has many suggestions commanding wholesome re- t, advice of help through all time; listen to this: " Man s to live, and liveth not to feed. Yet a reasonable time at in is necessary, for to eat overgreedily, and to snatch ur meat hastily, is hurtfull, and hindereth concoction; and new our meat well and to swallow it downe leisurely, is a t furtherance to the well digesting of the same. And in-

The following quotation will give some inkling of his be- liefs about the digestion of meat, and, too, how the Galenic terms of heat or cold, moist or dry, were applied : " But here in England where we feed on divers sorts of meates at one meale, the order commonly is thus; that first we eate pot- tage or brothes, then boyled meates, after that rosted or baked, and in the end -cheese and fruits. . . . And next I say, that for as much as our stomacks in England most commonly be hot and cholericke, that grosse meats be most convenient to be eaten first."

We to-day eat cheese with pie, because it is a convention; this convention probably arose because of the notion that cheese aided in the digestion of pie, and perhaps it is a direct descendant of the belief expressed by Dr. Coghan when he says: "First it [cheese] strengtheneth a weake stomacke. Secondly it maketh other meates to descend into the chief place of digestion, that is the bosom of the stomacke .... . "

It is rather difficult to estimate how much he realized the truth of his remarks when he warns against the use of fish taken from muddy waters, and advises the use of fire to destroy contagion. In the brief outline on how to avoid the plague there is much wisdom, and the same may be said of his directions how to avoid gout. Here and there in the book one glimpses a dim conception of immunity : "for they that come out of a pure aire into a corrupt ayre, are in greater danger than they that never fled away."

There is only one attempt in the whole book to describe a disease, a description which, seemingly, gives a picture of an epidemic of typhoid fever occurring in 1522, this date mak- ing his description probably a second-hand one.

It is curious how clearly two very divergent strains run through his medical ideas; he is very sound about diet, ex- ercise, moderation, etc., and on the other hand many of his conceptions of therapeutics are ludicrous ; perhaps because he could not analyze and separate the effects of drugs, and could check up the good results of proper diet, and exercise; and in all this he probably did not wholly realize how much phys- icians are aided by nature. Of his mistaken ideas, we may mention his feeling that yellow jaundice and worms are dangerous without medicine, and that a pleurisy is present death " without blood letting."

Many of our contemporaries believe, as he did, in the suc- cessful solvent treatment of renal and vesical stone. Perhaps there is truth in this; certainly there seems to be truth in his theory that certain kinds of food predispose to, and promote the formation of, calculi.

Any undue credulity he may have exhibited is excusable, for he lived when there was little or no tendency to study cause and effect; when Coghan writes that sage is of use " because it is good against pleurisies, and comforteth the sinews and Braine, it must needs bee for Students, who are commonly cumbered with diseases of the head," and that hare's brain is good for " shaking of the limmes, which is called Palsie," one must not feel that he is to be classed with the

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thin-witted people who built theories of dilutions and poten- tizations, and their wonderful effects. He was simply repeat- ing the errors which were a heritage from an even more cred- ulous ancestry. We must overlook this, and give him credit for the many sound bits of advice he deals out in this book.

Let us see what kind of a prescription he writes, if what is here given may be called a prescription; these are the direc- tions for making " aqua composita ":

Take of Sage, Hisop, Rosemary, Mint, Spike, or Lavender leaves, Maierom, Bay leaves, of each like much, of all foure good handfulls, to one gallon of liquor. Take also of Cloves, Mace, Nutmegs, Ginger, Cinamome, Pepper, Graynes, of each a quarter of an ounce, Liquorise and Anise, of each halfe a pound: beate the spices grosse, and first wash the herbs, then break them gently betweene your hands. Use the Liquorise and Anise as said in Aqua vitæ, then put all together into a Galon or more of good Ale or Wine, and let them steep all night close covered in some vessell of Earth or Wood, and the next morning after distill them as you doe Aqua vita.

We look in vain through this work for indubitable evidences of a belief in, or use of, charms and kindred relics of bar- baric medicine; there are several passages which imply a be- lief in astrology, though all of this may have been included on the authority of his predecessors, which would not necessarily carry with it his own personal approbation. As an example of undue faith we may instance his apparent approval of Dr. Steven's Water, a decoction of wine, ginger, galingale, canel, cinamom, nutmeg, greyns, cloves, mace, annis, fenel, caraway, sage, mint, red roses, time, pelletory of the wall, wild maie- rom, rosemary, wild time, camamel, lavender and avens, all distilled in a " Limbecke " and useful because " It comforteth the spirits, and preserveth greatly the youth of man & help- eth inward diseases comming of cold, against shaking of the palfery, it cureth the contraction of sinews, and helpeth the conception of women that be barren, it killeth worms in the belly, it helpeth the cold gout, it helpeth the tooth ach, it comforteth the stomacke very much, it cureth the cold dropsie, it helpeth the stone in the bladder, and reynes of the backe, it cureth the canker, it helpeth shortly a stinking breath, and who so useth this water now & then, but not too often, it pre- serveth him in good liking, & shal make one seeme young very long."

There are also hints that there then existed in England relics of very ancient savage medicinal agents; Coghan speaks of the use of the " lungs of fox, pulverized for preserving the lungs," and of an "electury " which he calls " Loche de Pul- mon Vulpis"; in an analogous class is a famous remedy long used by orientals, called "Triacle," a compound made under conditions of great mystery and ceremony, and containing, besides many other ingredients, portions of vipers. If one can believe what Coghan said about this remedy, it must have been a boon to suffering humanity. "Yet this much I dare say by the authority of Galen . .. . that no one medicine is bet- ter, either to preserve from the plague, or to expell the venome the principall parts in such as be infected, than Triacle, and is not onely good in the plague, but also in all other poysons, and novsome drinks; yea, and in most parts of other diseases,

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Twentieth Century History of Findlay and Hancock County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, Part 143

Author: Jacob Anthony Kimmell Publication date: 1910 Publisher: Number of Pages: 1189

Author: Jacob Anthony Kimmell
Publication date: 1910
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1189