Q. Why are water and oil frozen in cold weather, and wine and vinegar
not? A. Because that oil being without quality, and fit to be compounded
with anything, is cold quickly and so extremely that it is most cold.
Water being cold of nature, doth easily freeze when it is made colder
than its own nature. Wine being hot, and of subtle parts, suffereth no
freezing.
Q. Why do contrary things in quality bring forth the same effect? A.
That which is moist is hardened and bound alike by heat and cold. Snow
and liquid do freeze with cold; a plaster and gravel in the bladder are
made dry with heat. The effect indeed is the same, but by two divers
actions; the heat doth consume and eat the abundance of moisture; but
the cold stopping and shutting with its over much thickness, doth wring
out the filthy humidity, like as a sponge wrung with the hand doth cast
out the water which it hath in the pores and small passages.
Q. Why doth a shaking or quivering seize us oftentimes when any fearful
matter doth happen, as a great noise or a crack made, the sudden
downfall of water, or the fall of a large tree? A. Because that
oftentimes the humours being digested and consumed by time and made thin
and weak, all the heat vehemently, suddenly and sharply flying into the
inward part of the body, consumeth the humours which cause the disease.
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