Who would expect a quick flame
from hydropical Heraclitus? The poisoned soldier
when his belly brake, put out two pyres in Plutarch.
But in the plague of Athens, one private pyre served
two or three intruders; and the Saracens burnt in large
heaps, by the king of Castile, showed how little fuel
sufficeth. Though the funeral pyre of Patroclus took
up an hundred foot,* a piece of an old boat burnt Pompey;
and if the burthen of Isaac were sufficient for an holo-
caust, a man may carry his own pyre.
From animals are drawn good burning lights, and
good medicines against burning. Though the seminal
humour seems of a contrary nature to fire, yet the body
completed proves a combustible lump, wherein fire
finds flame even from bones, and some fuel almost from
all parts; though the metropolis of humidity+ seems
least disposed unto it, which might render the skulls of
these urns less burned than other bones. But all flies
or sinks before fire almost in all bodies: when the com-
mon ligament is dissolved, the attenuable parts ascend,
the rest subside in coal, calx, or ashes.
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