Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

PREFACE

TO THE

HISTORIA VITE ET MORTIS.

BY ROBERT LESLIE ELLIS.

Of the five treatises which in the dedication of the Historia Naturalis Bacon proposes to publish in five successive months, or even within a shorter period, the Historia Vito et Mortis stands last in the list of titles. But it was Bacon's intention that it should be published next in order to the Historia Ventorum, and this intention was fulfilled, though not as soon as he had proposed; the Historia Vitæ et Mortis not being published until 1623.

Bacon's reason for giving it precedence of the other histories is mentioned in the Aditus or preface, the extreme importance of the subject to which it relates, namely the prolongation and setting up of human life," a matter "in quâ vel minima temporis jactura pro pretiosâ haberi debet." Yet we may surely be permitted to doubt whether it be wise to regard longevity as in itself a thing desirable, and whether we are at liberty to seek to prolong life by other appliances than those by which health may be improved, or at least by which 1 Vita hominum proroganda et instauranda.

it cannot be impaired. If health and long life can be regarded as independent objects of pursuit, it may be said that we are bound to make our option for the former, seeing that we come into the world to perform duties for which enfeebled health more or less unfits us, and that it would be no addition to human happiness if we could succeed in making all men long-lived valetudinarians. Moreover, it is hard to see how the systematic pursuit of longevity is to be reconciled with the professions of men who speak of themselves as sojourners upon the earth and pilgrims. This difficulty Bacon himself perceived; and both in the following Aditus and in a corresponding passage in the De Augmentis where he is explicitly speaking of long life as a distinct object of pursuit, he remarks that though to Christian men the world is but a wilderness, yet it is to be accounted a blessing if our shoes and garments do not wax old by the way; an illustration by which the difficulty is not removed. Not to insist upon it, and admitting that the love of life is at any rate the most natural of all weaknesses, we may yet regard it as a happy circumstance that long life is apparently not to be attained by artificial means, and certainly not by means which tend to endanger health.

In the passage of the De Augmentis already referred to, Bacon complains that physicians have not sufficiently recognised the prolongation of life as one of the objects which their art should seek to obtain. The question had however been asked, whether life could be prolonged by other means than those which are used to preserve health, or to improve it. Thus Flacius in his Commentatio de Vitâ et Morte [1584] decides this question by asserting that health and

longevity depend on the same causes, and must therefore be promoted by the same means.1 But from this view Bacon altogether dissents; and he therefore divides the duty of the physician into three distinct parts: the preservation of health; the cure of diseases; and the prolongation of life. In speaking of the last, he warns men not to confound the treatment which conduces to health with that which conduces to long life. Some things there are, he says, which promote the alacrity of the spirits and increase the vigor of the functions, and are of use in warding off disease; and which nevertheless shorten life and accelerate the decay of old age. Contrariwise there are others which are of use in lengthening life, and yet cannot be used without endangering health; wherefore they who employ them must obviate the inconveniences which they might else occasion by other means.

The Historia Vita et Mortis is in fact an essay on this third part of medicine, "quæ nova est et desideratur, estque omnium nobilissima." In none of Bacon's writings is there more appearance of research; he has collected a great number of instances of longevity, and in attempting to find something in the character or way of life of the persons whom he mentions to which their long life may be ascribed, he often sums up with singular felicity whatever is most remarkable about them. Still it cannot be said that the theory on which he relies for the prolongation of life has much connexion with the facts which he has collected, and in truth no general inference can seemingly be derived from them, except perhaps that for the most part those men live longest in whom the spirit of life is the most vig

1 Flacius, iv. 23.

orous.

For the theory itself, which is based upon that of the animal spirits, not much can now be said; but the way in which it is set forth and the remarks by which it is accompanied have been much commended by one of the greatest of medical writers. Haller, in his edition of Boerhaave's Methodus Stud. Medicin., speaks thus of the Historia Vitae et Mortis: "Causam equidem mortis falsam adlegat, non satis cautus a præjudicatâ opinione, spiritum nempe vitalem exhalantem. Multum historiarum confert ad longævitates plantarum, animalium, hominum. Sapientia denique consilia dat, quibus longævitas obtineri queat, nitro, opio, purgationibus subinde repetitis, validis, omnium mediocritate, rejectis nugacibus opinionibus quæ eo tempore dominabantur." He gives a fuller account of it in the Bibliotheca Medica.

66

Spiritum vitalem aëre puriorem, igne mitiorem, habitare in corpore animali et viscidioribus particulis irretiri, ea vero vincula paulatim evadere, denique exhalare, eam esse mortis naturalis causam. Spem longævitatis esse in retardandâ hujus spiritus evolutione dum inviscatur, pori per quos exhalat obstruuntur, calor diminuitur. Ad longævitatem ergo pertinere vitam minus actuosam, opium, nitrum, somnum longiorem, purgationem alvi, diætam debilitantem. Homines qui salivationem passi sunt, aut alioquin ad summam macilentiam redacti, postquam convaluerunt, iidem ad longam ætatem perveniunt. Ad longævitatem spem facere periodos vitæ majores, ingenium non fervidissimum, incrementum lentius, corpus siccius, succorum subinde

1 I. 56. In the passage to which Haller's remark is a note, Boerhaave speaks in the highest terms of Bacon, and concludes by saying: "Quidquid Cartesius habet, si quid boni habet, hoc unice isti debet, neque melior autor haberi potuit, licet ejus nomen ab imperitis adeo supprimatur."

« AnteriorContinuar »