Aristotle makes a
query, why some animals cough, as man; some not, as
oxen. If coughing be taken as it consisteth of a
natural and voluntary motion, including expectoration
and spitting out, it may be as proper unto man as
bleeding at the nose; otherwise we find that Vegetius
and rural writers have not left so many medicines in vain
against the coughs of cattle; and men who perish by
coughs die the death of sheep, cats, and lions: and
though birds have no midriff, yet we meet with divers
remedies in Arrianus against the coughs of hawks.
And though it might be thought that all animals who
have lungs do cough; yet in cataceous* fishes, who have
large and strong lungs, the same is not observed; nor
yet in oviparous quadrupeds: and in the greatest
thereof, the crocodile, although we read much of their
tears, we find nothing of that motion.
From the thoughts of sleep, when the soul was con-
ceived nearest unto divinity, the ancients erected an
art of divination, wherein while they too widely ex-
patiated in loose and in consequent conjectures, Hippo-
crates+ wisely considered dreams as they presaged
* Cardan in his
Encomium Podagrae reckoneth this among
the
Dona Podagrae, that they are delivered thereby from the
phthisis and stone in the bladder.
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