perdit, dementat; by subtraction of his assisting grace God permits it) weakness, want of government, our facility and proneness in yielding to several lusts, in giving way to every passion and perturbation of the mind:  by which means we metamorphose ourselves and degenerate into beasts.  All which that prince of [875]poets observed of Agamemnon, that when he was well pleased, and could moderate his passion, he was—­os oculosque Jovi par:  like Jupiter in feature, Mars in valour, Pallas in wisdom, another god; but when he became angry, he was a lion, a tiger, a dog, &c., there appeared no sign or likeness of Jupiter in him; so we, as long as we are ruled by reason, correct our inordinate appetite, and conform ourselves to God’s word, are as so many saints:  but if we give reins to lust, anger, ambition, pride, and follow our own ways, we degenerate into beasts, transform ourselves, overthrow our constitutions, [876]provoke God to anger, and heap upon us this of melancholy, and all kinds of incurable diseases, as a just and deserved punishment of our sins.

SUBSECT.  II.—­The Definition, Number, Division of Diseases.

What a disease is, almost every physician defines. [877]Fernelius calleth it an “affection of the body contrary to nature.” [878]Fuschius and Crato, “an hindrance, hurt, or alteration of any action of the body, or part of it.” [879]Tholosanus, “a dissolution of that league which is between body and soul, and a perturbation of it; as health the perfection, and makes to the preservation of it.” [880]Labeo in Agellius, “an ill habit of the body, opposite to nature, hindering the use of it.”  Others otherwise, all to this effect.

Number of Diseases.] How many diseases there are, is a question not yet determined; [881]Pliny reckons up 300 from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot:  elsewhere he saith, morborum infinita multitudo, their number is infinite.  Howsoever it was in those times, it boots not; in our days I am sure the number is much augmented: 

[882]   ------“macies, et nova febrium
Terris incubit cohors.”

For besides many epidemical diseases unheard of, and altogether unknown to Galen and Hippocrates, as scorbutum, small-pox, plica, sweating sickness, morbus Gallicus, &c., we have many proper and peculiar almost to every part.

No man free from some Disease or other.] No man amongst us so sound, of so good a constitution, that hath not some impediment of body or mind. Quisque suos patimur manes, we have all our infirmities, first or last, more or less.  There will be peradventure in an age, or one of a thousand, like Zenophilus the musician in [883]Pliny, that may happily live 105 years without any manner of impediment; a Pollio Romulus, that can preserve himself [884]"with wine and oil;” a man as fortunate as Q. Metellus, of whom Valerius so much brags; a man as healthy as Otto Herwardus, a senator of Augsburg in Germany, whom [885]Leovitius