the more temperate part of the whole masse inclining to heat and moisture and painted with red THE more temperate part of the Chyle and indifferent in substance is converted into blood properly so called which is of affinity to the nature and temper of the Liver which being hot and moist communicates its temper to a substance like to it self and it not only tempers but dyes it red in so deep a grain that it outvies the colour of other humors partaking of the same masse so that the whole masse of humors is vested in red and in an absolute term embraces the name of blood Which that it might be plentiful these accessaries are requisite viz. temperate aliment and of a good juice the flower of Age spring time an hot and moist temper of the Liver Though blood proceeds from all aliment yet some are more others less copious in the production of it When therefore all these causes convene from this concurrence will result a Sanguin Temperament because blood is very predominant It is usefull for the nutrition of carnous parts as of the muscles and bowels which are nourished by blood properly so called The effect of it is to raise in men hilarity and mirth a propensity to sports and love and flourishes them with a lovely colour because they are well fraught with temperate heat which is the original of these merry frolicks As we may take notice that all creatures in the cradle of their Age are much addicted to hilarity because that is the furnace of natural heat But whatever blood confines it self to the veines is stockt with many fibres by the benefit of which it acquireth concretion and assimulation with the parts These Fibres a great number of which the blood harbours are manifestly evident when the blood is tempered with much water or stirred with the hand as may be specified in Swines blood all the fibres following this agitation that may be an hindrance to concretion for such is the vertue of these fibres that they presently rally to an unition with the blood which flowes out of the veins as is manifest in the proposed examples And by the help of these the blood being conveyed to divers parts for the better nutrition is condesed and solidated so that it may easily be assimilated to the parts otherwise if destitute of fibres it would remain liquid For it is out of the reach of credit that Aristotle's opinion should hold true that Harts Does and Camels want them but we must apprehend that they have but few which are sufficient to cause an indifferent concretion But these fibres are of colour wholly white representing a nervous substance from whence we may fetch an opinion that they derive themselves not from the Liver but from the ventricle which is wholly nervous and doth in some manner impart the nature of its substance to the Chyle But Blood is two-fold the one lodged in the Veins the other in the Arteries The venal is more crasse cold and ruddy and designed for the nourishment of parts of a solid substance Arterial is thinner hotter and inclining to yellow and officious in the nutrition of parts of a spiritous substance The blood in the veins is derived immediately from the Liver which it signifies by a tincture of the nature and temper thereof and so is colder then the arterial whose forge is the heart where it is elaborated to tenuity and acquires a yellowish colour by reason of aire confused with it in the left ventricle of the heart which washes away that rich dye therefore it is so much hotter then the heart according to the proportion of that heat which causeth an excesse in the temper of the heart in relation to that of the Liver A COROLLARY Some have impudence enough to deny that there is such a thing as blood properly so called but will needs argue the whole masse of humors to be constituted only of choler flegme and melancholy and that the mixtion of these three humors is termed blood of which assertion they indeavour to make demonstration by the example of milke which is immediately produced from blood for in it there are only three homogeneous substances to be found viz. butyrous serous and caseous which are correspondent to these three humors But this opinion is weaken'd by this that nothing but true blood can paint in red the masse of humors For choler is yellow flegme white and melancholy black Besides the carnous parts which in our body are many bearing Analogy in colour and temper to blood do peculiarly instance that this is the humor which they prey upon But to the example of milke I reply that it is not necessary that all things should have the same parts as those to whom they owe their generation for the seed generated by the blood hath only two parts viz. spirit and incrassation To this may be added that that example argues rather against the choler than the blood for butter is Analogous to blood as hot and moist as cheese to melancholy but the serum admits of no such comparison to flegme but rather to ichors which are evacuated by Urine and sweat and obtain the very name of serum But especially notice is to be taken of that axiome upon which we ground that the resolution of things is into the same masse from which they took their composition by this is understood only their ultimate resolution into the Elements For things by a kind of gratitude surrender themselves into the bosome of their first causes But the Elements are the first bodies ingredient to the composition of all mixt bodies which fall back again into them but owe no such duty to their second causes viz. the flesh and bones after the decease of the creature are resolved into the Elements but not into bread and other aliment which supplies nutrition to them or into seed and blood out of which they were framed in conception CHAP. IV. Of Alimentary Flegme Alimentary Flegme is the more unconcoct part of the blood Cold and Moist almost destitute of tast or sweetish THE more cold and moist part of the masse of blood is called flegme generated out of the cruder part of the Chyle hence Galen terms it crude and parboil'd blood who asserts also that in a famine of blood this being brought to maturation by a farther coction converts to blood and that in the very veins by a Sanguifying vertue sent to them as Auxiliary from the Liver Cold and moist aliments produce a great fertility of it so Age winter and a cold and moist temper of the Liver From the winter ariseth cause of doubt for that our bellies according to Hippocrates are hotter in winter by reason they are the randezvouz of the native heat which in this season concentring there must necessarily be commodious for concoction and so there will be no plenty of crude humors generated To this I oppose that flegme is abundantly generated in winter not in respect of the
efficient cause but of the matter viz. aliments which in this season are cold compact and not easily concocted Now also the appetite is very vigorous and makes roome for a large quantity of aliment which by reason it is so copious cannot be well dress'd but remains a crude Chyle which converts into crude blood for the errour of the first is not amended by the second coction as Galen affirms It is usefull for the Nutrition of the Cold and Moist parts The brain and the Spinalis medulla bear an Analogy to flegme therefore they are nourished by it as appears by the customary excretions of the brain This alimentary flegme is commonly termed pituitous blood as choler and melancholy bilious and melancholick blood into which we must make a curious inquiry lest we in perusing Authors should be lead into an error when we find them assert that all the parts acknowledge their nutrition from the blood The effect of it is where it is predominant to induce upon men stupidity Laziness Sleepiness Softness and Whiteness all the body over Cold in conjunction with moisture incrassates and settles the spirits to almost an immobility from whence these accidents follow CHAP. V. Of Alimentary Choler Alimentary Choler is the thinner part of the blood Hot and Dry something bitter and yellow AS the four humors correspond to the four Elements so Choler to a fiery nature generated from the more hot and dry part of the Chyle having a touch of amaritude though not so copious as excrementitious choler for then it would be unfit so nutrition For it is undoubtedly true that bitter things afford no nourishment viz. those which excell in amaritude for hysope succory and many other things which have but a sleight tincture of it are nutritive So alimentary choler having but a smal stock of it viz. so that the parts nauseate it not It is also potentially not actually dry because all humors are fluid and actually moist yet potentially it causeth dryness as sea water or brine may be termed dry Hot and Dry aliments fat and oily Manly age Summer season a Liver of a hot and dry temper causeth it to abound It seems averse from Reason that fat and oily aliments being hot and moist and so more accommodate to the production of blood should be converted into Choler To this may be answered That in their proper temper they are more fit for the generation of blood but being of a substance easily inflammable and meeting with bodies prepared and disposed to the production of bilious siccity they are easily naturalized into Choler Hence it is customary with Physicians to assert that sweet things do with little difficulty change into Choler which is alwaies to be understood of bodies hot and bilious for in bodies more cold and temperate is rather produced blood as is evident in Honey and Milk for Honey for Old men and Milk for Children is very nutritive but both in men of full age or hotter constitutions are reduced into Choler The duty of which is to nourish the similary parts and to be in place of salt to the blood which as sawce being pleasant to the parts causeth in them a greedier appetite to imbibe the blood Of the parts which receive nutrition from the bilious blood the Lungs are esteemed the principal whose substance being so rare that they can easily entertain the Air want not much nutriment from the blood But the sweetness of the other humors being tempered by a sleight mixture of bilious amaritude gives a pleasing taste to the whole mass which makes the parts prey with more delight upon the aliment The effect of it is to make men in whom there is plenty of it ready watchful inclined to anger and lean All these are the effects of Calidity and Siccity CHAP. VI. Of Alimentary Melancholy Alimentary Melancholy is the thicker part of the blood cold and dry of a sharp taste and of colour black THE thicker part of the Chyle alters into Melancholy which is as it were the mud and dregs of the blood like the lees of wine which usually repair to the bottome of the tub it is therefore set in similitude with Earth The plenty of it proceeds from crasse and earthy aliment constant age autumn and continued anxietie It affords nourishment to the parts of a like temper Of this nature the Milt is the chief then the bones which though not resembling it in colour are yet of a relative temper but acquire whiteress by a further coction The effect of it is where it is predominant to produce fear sadness rudness in carriage and a black colour Obscure and dark spirits run through the bodies of melancholy men which represent sad apparitions to their mind and introduce dulness That assertion of Aristotle well known among Physicians that melancholy men are ingenuous doth nothing impugne the truth of this being not to be apprehended of such melancholicks as are naturally so being of a temper cold and dry but of those who become so accidentally having been naturally of a sanguin or bilious complexion but in progresse of time some thinner part of the blood being scorched and incrassated is ambitious to be naturalized into melancholy but is much hotter and clearer for blood is in it self very clear therefore spirits clear and indifferent hot thick and consistent as it were bred out of a crasse humor being generated out of this humor are very fit to cause prudence This then is that melancholick humor which causes ingenuity invention of Arts and Sciences and excellent skill in tillage but not that naturall melancholy which operates stolidity and stupidity from whence it is denominated Asinine Melancholy CHAP. VII Of the Secundary Humors Thus far of the Primary alimentary Humors the Secundary succeed and they are so termed because they do immediatly result from the 1 and are subservient to some peculiar member THE Primary humors lodged in the veins and honoured with the title of blood are wafted to every part that they may be nutritive to them all but when they begin to be changed by the parts they entertaine the name of Secundary Humors Some rather terme them humidities then humors because part of them fall into the nature of the Substance of the parts rather then of the humors so that they stand in opposition to the four siccities of the parts proposed by Galen which is not voide of reason But yet they will admit the name of humors by reason that they are the immediate consequences of the primary humors nor are yet true parts And they are four the first is called Unnamed or inbred Humor the second Dew the third Glue the fourth Cambium These four secundary are anthenticated by Avicen Fen. 1. first Can. Doct. 4. Cap. 1. which he spins out of Galen who in book 7. Meth. Cap. 4. reckons four siccities contingent to the parts of our body by reason of the consumption of the four contrary humidities which humidities are generated by
those also which proâ—eed from either apart if it be the humor which caused the disease of the sick person So in bilious feavers critical effluxions of choler or pituitous of flegme cause a solution of the disease or at least promise very great hopes of health A spontaneous vomiting surprising one long troubled with a profluxion of the belly is the solution of the disease Aph. 15. Sect. 6. For the morbifick matter is revulsed into the contrary part and this revulsion signifies a refreshing of nature and resumption of strength For as a Physician labours the retreat of those things which flow into any part so nature when she begins to prevail causeth this recoile as when upon surdity she causeth bilious dejections so upon a flux of the belly she converts to vomiting For when the intestines are troubled with a fluxion it shews the power of nature if she can turn the stream of this ill affected influxion into another part If bloud is conveyed upward whatever it be it is bad Aph. 25. Sect. 4. Bloud ejected by vomit issues from the ventricle or liver and discovers apertion ruption or erosion of some vein in those parts such vomiting therefore is counted bad And this Hipp. in his Aph. mentions as also he speaks of bloud expelled by a cough which is raised from the breast or lungs Yet note that some times bloudy vomiting is good and healthy if it be critically performed though this happens very seldome yet Galen averres it 7. Meth. chap. 11.3 of cause of sympt chap. 2. and 5. of affected places chap. 7. and we have seen sometimes a pleurisie in a strong young man to have been perfectly and healthfully judged by vomiting bloud on the seventh day We also saw another who after a tedious sickness being as it were pained with difficulty of spiration upon a sudden emission of black bloud by copious vomits was freed This aphorisme therefore must be understood with this distinction viz. that the persevering and often repeated vomiting of bloud is bad but if it happen once and return again and if the solution of any disease follow it it is undoubtedly good Quantity Small and troublesome vomit in an acute feaver is bad For it is not convenient that any thing decretory should be sparingly expelled but such vacuations signifie either such a plenty of matter that nature cannot bear it but expelleth some of it symptomatically or the imbecillity of nature in vain endeavouring to remove superfluities Quality Vomits variously coloured composed of many humors are bad For they signifie that various humors are lodged in the body which cause nature the more trouble by how much more difficult it is to grapple with divers antagonists For if it be a very uneasie taske to encounter divers kinds of aliments how much more difficult and dangerous will it be to attempt to concoct and subdue various humors deviating from the prescripts of nature especially in acute diseases in which the time for skirmish is short which should be very long that we might conceive greater hopes of the victory of nature Porraceous eruginous pale black or stinking vomit is deadly For such vomit signifies that porraceous eruginous or black choler are predominant in the body But all these species of choler do usually produce malignant and deadly diseases but if a stink be joyned to them they signifie a notable corruption of humors which will soon poyson nature We find an example of eruginous vomit in Hipp. 3. Epid. Sect. aegr 4. where Philistes on the first day vomited bilious matter in quantity small yellow at first afterward much eruginous matter on the fifth day in the morning he dyed As also Sect. 3. of the same book aegr 4. where a phrenitical person on the first day vomited much eruginous thin matter on the fourth he dyed of black vomit we have an example in 1. Epid. aegr 〈◊〉 one who on the eighth day about evening vomited a little black bilious matter and on the eleventh dyed Yet it may be objected that this signe is dubious because the wife of Epicrates as we read 1. Epid. aegr 5. on the twentieth day vomited a little bilious black matter and was perfectly judged without a Feaver on the eighth We must answer that that disease was so dangerous and attended by such desperate symptomes that it was a wonder how the sick party should escape when it had held her eighty dayes But it sometimes happens that some even most deadly diseases are beyond all hope of the Physician brought to an happy conclusion which yet do not debilitate the judgements of art which imply a common though not alwaies a necessary consequence Besides this it is worth animadversion that such depraved humors are sometimes Critically expelled though this be a rare accident Lastly of stinking vomit with a train of other bad qualities we have an instance in 3 Epid. Sect. 2. aegr 12. Where a woman on the eighth and ninth day vomited a little bilious matter on the eleventh virulent and bilious on the twelfth and thirteenth much black stinking matter on the fourteenth she dyed Sincere and impermixt vomits are in acute Feavers bad 10. Prorrhet For sincere humor is not crude onely but also incoctile as excluding as well the act as the power of coction Hipp. termes every humor void of mixtion or all fervid and crude excrement not tempered with its serum impermixt Whose generation proceeds from the vitiosity of some part or from heat and febrile inflammation the aquous and serous part being exhausted therefore in an acute Feaver it shews that a great inflammation is fuelled within and most commonly by nature invincible In any disease if black choler be upward or downward evacuated it is deadly Aph. 22. Sect. 4. Such excretion is deadly as a signe and as a cause for no excretion in the cradle of a disease can be healthful and evacuation of any humor is bad before the signes of concoction For this demonstrates that the cause is very biting and troublesome or that the faculty is wholly languid when the oeconomy of nature is thus disturbed which concocts first then segregates and parts the useful from the useless lastly expels But when the peccant matter in this manner disturbing nature is very bad we must think the sick person is deadly affected But if in the progress of the disease black choler be expelled the evacuation of it may be sometimes good viz. if the signes of concoction appear with it They who are extenuated by acute or long diseases or wounds or by any other means if they evacuate black choler or as it were black bloud through their inferiors they die the day following Aph. 23. Sect. 4. Extenuation signifies great debility such dejection denotes a great disease which soon destroyes the sick person so very infirme When therefore such an evacuation happens to persons so extenuated it signifies that nature now quite enfeebled cannot any longer contain those humors but sets them at liberty and
cholerick feavers are judged for the most part by sweat because the thinness and heat of the humor is more easily expelled by nature by that way of evacuation The material cause the body of patient Whoever in their sickness have a soft and loose skin have their diseases more easily judged by sweating Effects the animal actions Coldness Whether that loosness and softness of the skin proceed from the natural disposition of the body or the constitution of the aire they avail much to perfect the Crisis by sweating A coldness or shaking in continual Feavers shew that the Crisis will be performed by sweat For those humors being thin when they are carried by the veins to the habit with their sharpness they bite the membranous parts of the body and so cause a shaking Vital Pulse Asoft and fluctuating pulse in feavers foretels sweat to be near at hand For when the more thin parts of the urine endeavour a passage through the body they moisten and soften the arteries which causes a moist and fluctuating pulse which is the forerunner of sweat Natural Suppression of urine Suppression of urine in feavers shews the Crisis near at hand by sweat For when the matter of sweat and urine are the same viz. the serous humor while they are carried to the habit of the body it follows consequently that the urine must be suppressed or be much lessened in quantity The excrements If a hot vapour be perceived to arise from the body of the sick patient or a slight kind of dew it shews the approch of the Crisis by sweat If contrary to custome the external parts of the body of the sick person grow hot or the face grow red it shews the Crisis is approching by sweat These two last signes shew that nature endeavours a passage to the habit of the body by which she may expel the noxious and preternatural humors CHAP. VIII Of the signes of future Crisis by Urine THe signes of future Crisis by urine are very few yet they may be known partly by some particular and positive signes partly by the absence of others For if the signes do appear which do demonstrate in general the approch of the Crisis and that there be no symptomes of vomit flux bleeding or sweat then may you conjecture that it will come to pass by urine But those signes which do particularly demonstrate the coming thereof are set down in this order which are notwithstanding to be collected together that we may thence have some certainty to make a judgement They are these A cold constitution Old age Thickness of the skin Frequent pissing or a greater quantity of urine appearing upon the symptomatical day A heat or itching in the extreme parts of the privities A heaviness in the Hypochondrium The three first signes concern the impediments which are in the external parts of the body which hinder the serous humor from purging forth by sweat But when the same matter which flows out by sweat may also be easily purged out by urine there being a stoppage in the passages for sweat we may conjecture that the excretion will be by urine The three last signes shew that the humors do descend to the passages of the urine CHAP. IX Of the signes of future Crisis by bleeding THe following rules foreshew the approch of bleeding The Essence Inflammation of the hypocondriums are for the most part allayed by bleeding And in this manner of solution doth all the hope of safety consist which if it happen not death may be presaged The assisting causes Bleeding uses more frequently to happen until the twenty fifth year then after that time in a sanguine or cholerick constitution in the spring season and at the time of southern winds The Effects From the effects which are taken either from the impairing of the actions or the excrements or the change of qualities proceed these signes of future bleeding Dreams and images of red things A frequent pain of the head and neck Heaviness in the temples and a great pulse in their arteries Tingling or sounding in the ears Dimness of the eyes and a kind of lightning before them Redness of them and almost of all the face An aversion to the light Involuntary teares Itching of the nose A drop of bloud upon the symptomatical day Difficulty of breathing A stretching of the Hypochondriums without pain When the bloud begins to be carried up to the head it begets phantasms or appearances of red things both by dreams and in awaking As happened to a Roman youth of whom Galen makes mention For he labouring with an acute disease thought that he saw a red Serpent running about the roof of his chamber which caused him suddenly to leap out of his bed from whence Galen foretold bleeding and forbid the letting bloud which other Physicians had prescribed Pain in the head and neck proceeds from the same translation of the bloud to the upper parts which by griping and distending the membranes begets pain the arteries beat through the extraordinary motion of the temples being oppressed and streightned by the fulness of the veins Tingling of the ears is caused by the ascending of the vapours in great plenty to the head Dimness of the sight proceeds from certain thick and copious vapours which arising to the upper parts stop the passages whence it comes to pass that they shuting out the animal spirits the sight is dulled That kind of lightning which hovereth before the eyes is nothing else but certain little thin and ragged bodies of several colours contained between the chrystalline and carneous Tunicle produced from the vapours carried upward which though they are within yet deceive the sight as if they were without when as the eye used to external objects judges that to be without which is within A redness of the face and eyes is caused by the bloud gathered in more abundance to those parts The aversion from light proceeds from this that the eyes being already distended with plenty of humors are more distended by the light because light scatters the spirits which causes a dilatation of the eye and thence pain which that the sick person may avoid he shuns the light Involuntary tears are caused by a repletion of the eyes and parts adjacent which being distended beyond measure press the kernels containing the humors which causeth tears Itching of the nose is caused by the ascent of the vapours which tickle the nose A drop of bloud appearing on a symptomatical day as the fourth or seventh shews that the bleeding will be on the day of the Crisis that is on the seventh or fourteenth because nature begins to drive the humor to those parts upon those days Difficulty of breathing is caused by the bloud which when it is carried to the upper parts causes a compression of the diaphragma The tension of the hypochondriums is caused by reason that the bloud begins to stir in its fountain and in the roots of the veins but that distention continues
repletion the nearest part Hence it appears that where they are both joyned together there a moderate distance is to be observed But when Revulsion and Derivation are performed both at once from one vein that moderation is to be used that the vacuation be not little which being only agitated increases the flux rather then allay it by extraction of the humour and care must be taken that the same day if nature suffer or at farthest the next day that the same vein be opened again This is a most useful precept and of great moment in Physick though many regard it not to the great dammage of their patients for if at first the bloud be sparingly let out and not in a sufficient quantity it runs more vehemently into the part Then it being not lawful to exhaust the whole at the first section but only as to the change of colour according to Hippocrates and that the strength will not bear a greater it remains that what the first section only left the second should take away And whereas the place affected being emptied it sucks bloud from the near places and vitiates it unlesse it be taken away by the benefit of that second evacuation it is unavoidable that it should putrefie and breed a greater mischief The quantity of Revulsion and Derivation ought to answer the quantity of the flux if the strength can bear it So when the flux is great if derivation and revulsion is to be performed by bloud-letting the bloud must be taken away in that quantity that it may exhaust all the matter of the flux regard being had to the strength that they are able to bear a total evacuation And here we may take notice of that notorious precept of Hipp. 2. de vict rat in acu text 10. where he teaches the manner and limit of bleeding in inflamations especially in Pleuresies that is to the alteration of colour For that change of colour shewes that the bloud comes from the very part affected as Galen teaches in his comment on these words Whatever bloud saith he is contained in flegmone that changes colour through the abundance of heat but the rest remains alike in all parts For that cause the bloud which is diffused through the whole body being more flegmatick will be more ruddie in that side which is oppressed with the flegmone But if the bloud which is diffused through the whole body be more ruddy it would be more adust and blackish in the side possessed with the flegmone Therefore change of colour certainly signifies a translation of the bloud from the part affected But a man must not alwaies expect it as Galen observes there by reason of the failing of the strength While the humour flowes violently the greater veins are to be opened so the nature of the place and situation of the parts permit it Because a quick and sudden Revulsion is made through the greater veins and for the most part Derivation also which may resist the celerity of the flux CHAP. III. Of Letting Bloud THE viciousnesse of the humours is twofold in quantity and quality That is called Plethora this a Catochymia A Plethora indicates bloud-letting a Cacochymia purging This Theorem includes a very great Controversie concerning the indications of bloud-letting which hath variously troubled the wits of Authors and entangled them in many difficulties From which that we may the more easily disingage our selves we shall follow the principles laid in the former Section where the nature of things indicating and things indicated is rightly stated and they exactly distinguished from Coindicants and Correpugants First therefore it is to be supposed that we do here take bloud-letting for a species of evacuation and a remedy to evacuate the bloud Which being granted we say that bloud-letting is indicated only by a Plethora or fulnesse which signifies a redundancy of bloud when as but one thing can be indicated by one thing and the thing indicated ought to be contrary to the thing indicating but to plenty of bloud the diminution thereof is directly opposed which Galen acknowledges while he teaches that bloud-letting is indicated by the multitude of bloud condition of the strength and youthful age But when l. de ven sect and in many other places he sets down simply the foresaid indications of bloud-letting that is the greatnesse of the disease the good condition of the strength and vigorous age adjoyning them to plenitude he doth not give them properly and strictly the name of Indications as from that which followes shall appear 1. One thing is only indicated by one thing as hath been shewed c. 3. sect 1. therefore bloud-letting cannot be indicated by three things 2. Strength and age when they are referred to natural things never can truly indicate but only coindicate as is above demonstrated c. 4. sect 1. 3. The greatnesse of the disease the law of contrariety-being observed which ought to intercede between the indicant and the thing indicated cannot indicate any thing but the greatnesse of the remedy And so purging being as great a remedy as bloud-letting they are both equally indicated by a great disease but not bloud-letting particularly Which Galen seeing 4. Meth. saith the greatnesse of the disease indicates now purgation now bloud-letting by which is shewn that the greatnesse of a disease is not a true indicant of bloud-letting because it is not one thing nor perpetual 4. From the same law of contrariety when bloud-letting is a kinde of evacuation and that there ought a contrariety to intercede between a great disease and evacuation but there being no contrariety one thing cannot be indicated by another Neither will it suffice to say they are contraries by accident for true indicants ought to indicate of themselves a contrary remedy 5. There are many great diseases for which bloud-letting is not convenient as a Hectick Feaver and whatever are caus'd by emptinesse and therefore the magnitude of a disease is no true Indicant of bloud-letting Therefore we say that Galen makes the magnitude of a disease to indicate bloud-letting not that it properly and truly does so which some late writers endevour to defend but that it is a sign which shewes a vehement distemper in the bloud as often as the disease proceeds from thence and that viciousnesse of the bloud requires bloud-letting Strength and age coindicate only and are said to indicate through a large acception of the word as we have shewed above that Coindicants are often by Galen termed Indicants The magnitude of the disease indicates bloud-letting conditionally that there is no other remedy through the abundance of bloud for else the Plethora being absent the disease might be cured other waies as by fasting exercise c. A Plethora is either as to the Vessels or the Strength A Plethora as to the Vessels is caused either when all the humours are equally increased and is simply called a Plethora or else when the bloud only redounds superfluously and is called
a Plethora of bloud when another humour exceeds the bloud in quantity and exceeds also all the other humours they also abounding above their just measure it is called a Plethora of that humour Lastly when one humour exceeds all the rest they being equally poys'd it is called a Cacochymia Cacochymia is a vice in the quality as the other is in the quantity for bloud may be increased without a vice in the quality though not other humours Plethora as to the Strength is that which though it do not fill the vessels extraordinarily yet it oppresses the faculties of the body especially the natural so that when it cannot be rul'd by them it degenerates into corruption Again of Plethora's some are light some heavie some present some future same common some proper Bloud-letting is also convenient for Revulsion Derivation and to cool the whole body not of it self but by accident Bloud-letting of it self drawes out a multitude of humours contained in the veins but by accident it makes a revulsion and derivation of the humours flowing to some part It refrigerates also the body by accident by drawing forth part of the hot humour and giving a free transpiration to that which is left From the foresaid Theorems may be easily gathered the solutions of all arguments which are brought by many to prove that bloud-letting is not indicated by a Plethora For in those who have fallen from a high place though there be no manifest Plethora present yet they breath a vein because there is a Plethora as to the strength for they being weakned by the fall cannot rule the humours which before nature kept well in order while the party was in health therefore is that bloud-letting for revulsion of the humours that began to flow to the bruised parts So in an immoderate flux of the bloud breathing a vein is commended not as it is an evacuation but as it is a revulsory medicine So in putrid Feavers a vein is opened to cool the body or because there is a Plethora as to the strength For nature being delivered from part of the burthen by which she was oppressed the more easily sustains and tames with lesse difficulty that which is behinde Lastly a light Plethora which may be cured by exercise wants not bloud-letting but that only which is more heavy and produces or shortly will produce some great disease Among those things which vindicate bloud-letting the strength of the body obtains the first place which if it be firm and lusty doth well permit it but if it be faint and languid will not allow thereof The Strength is comprehended under a threefold number of the faculties but especially in the vital faculty for if from a big and equal pulse and free breathing it appear undiminished and lusty it permits bloud-letting but if on the contrary it appear weak and faint by the pulse and manner of breathing it disswades bloud-letting Though the morbifick cause or the disease it self do require this kinde of remedy or at most perswades it to be done sparingly and at at several intervals But the faint strength is diligently to be distinguished from the oppressed strength The strength is oppressed by internal causes as obstruction and abundance of humour and then they are relieved by evacuation They are dissolved and dissipated by most evident causes as by the heat and malignant corruption of the air by labour watching famine or any immoderate vacuation fiercenesse of pain violence of the disease and diuturnity likewise and other such like and then refreshing and renewing is rather to be used then evacuation When the strength is faint and oppressed the pulse is equall but with this difference for at the beginning of a disease when the strength is oppressed the pulse is perceived to be little and almost buried but when they are faint and languishing in the increase and vigor of the disease with which the formentioned causes concur A vigorous age coindicates also bloud-letting Which is in the middle between youth and old age but childhood and old age allow not of it but in cases of urgent necessity and that with extreme caution used Age neither coindicates nor is correpugnant unlesse in respect of the strength which in a childe and old man are so weak that they can hardly sustain bloud letting For children have a soft tender and open body which of it self is continually wasted and dissolved And as for old men they want spirits and heat and therefore Hip. 4. de vict rat in morb acut teaches that a vigorous age where the disease is great and the strength not impaired requires bloud-letting whhom Galen following 21. Meth. c. 14. â— de cur rat per vew sect forbids to let bloud before the 14. year and after the 70. which is to be understood of that more full evacuation used by the ancients for a moderate bloud-letting which is but equall or inferior to the strength and fulnesse of humour overy age can beat if it be vigorous and lusty for age is not to be measured by number of years but by the constitution of the strength and habit of body Which Celsus elegantly confirms l. 2. s. 10. The Ancients saith he judged that the first and last age could not brook this kinde of remedy and did perswade themselves that a woman with childe cured this way would prove abortive But experience afterward shew'd that there was no certainty in these things and that there are other better observations by which the Physitian may inform his judgement For it matters not what the age be nor what is born in the body but what the strength is and therefore a strong childe a lusty old man and a healthy woman with childe are safely cured So Rhasis in a decrepit old age oppressed with a violent Pleuresie let bloud and Avenzour opened a vein in his childe not above three years old and that with successe And daily we see that children of four or five years of age are recovered from dangerous diseases by bloud-letting The quantity of bloud to be let is judged by the greatnesse of the vice in the bloud and so a great disease indicates the letting of much bloud a moderate disease moderate bleeding a little one little The quantity the strength of the patient coindicates which if they are lusty then he may safely bleed as much as the disease requires if weak lesse if very weak not at all In a great distemper of the bloud the ancients were wont to let the patient bleed to swouning which is not to be understood of those who are afraid of bleeding or if it happen through some other cause beside that extraordinary bleeding but when it happens only by reason of the evacuation such a kinde of bloud-letting as this they used in great inflamations burning Feavers and extreme pains And Galen affirms that he hath found by experience that if in burning Feavers the patient bleed to swouning that presently the whole habit of the body
Simple Roots of Althea Liquorice Leaves of Mallowes Lettice Purslain Endive Sow-thistle Scariola Seeds of Melons Pompions Cucumers Althea Mallows Lettice white Poppy Fleabane barly Fruits sweet Prunes Raisins Jujubes Almonds Flowers of Violets Water-lillies Gums Tragacanth Animals Milk Butter Compounds Waters of Lettice Purslain Water-lilly Syrups of Liquorice Jujubes Violets Conserves of Violets Water-lilly candied Lettice Electuaries cold Diatragacanth Externals Oyles of Violets Roses Water-lilly Oyntments refrigerans Galeni oyntment of Roses Lithontriptick or stone-breaking Medicaments Simple Roots of Cammock great Burdock Saxifrage golden rod Caltrop Woods Nephritical wood Rindes of dry Beans of Lawrel-roots Leaves of Saxifrage Caltrop wilde Tansie Strawberries Pellitory of the wall sea Fennell Seeds of Millet of the sun Nettles Radish Fruits Kernels of Cherry-stones Peach-stones Medlers Juniper-berries ivie-berries Gums Turpentine Animals Hog-lice Goats bloud prepared river Crabs eyes Stones the Judaick Nephritick Crystal prepared Compounds Waters of Saxifrage Caltrop Tobacco Syrups Nephrocathartick of Joubertus of Radish of Fernelius simple Oxymel Oxymel of Squils Electuaries Lithontripticon or the stone-breaking electuary Medicaments cleansing away sand and viscous humours They are the same which the Diureticks and such things as expell the Stone but the most efficacious are Turpentine Pellitory of the wall Radish Smallage red Chiches CHAP. XXVI Of Hysterical Medicaments THose Medicaments with are used in affections of the womb either corroborate it or help conception or forward the expulsion of the birth and secondines or bring forth the monthly purgations or restrain the immoderate flux of them or purge the womb from the filth of excrements Those things which help conception refresh the womb with a moderate heat and recreate it by an aromatical vertue and confirm it by a kinde of astriction Those things which exclude the birth and secundines hasten the months also but the stronger of them are to be used Those things which move the months are hot and of thin parts yet they dry not very much neither do they attenuate only the bloud but also open the mouths of the vessels There is a great affinity between those things which move the months and Diureticks but they are in this distinguished according to Galen 5. de simpl med fac c. 22. in that both are hot but Diureticks powerfully dry which those things that move the months do not For those things which dry more vehemently consume the bloud and so steal away the matter from the months as also thicken it and make it lesse commodious for flux Yet they help forward the profusion of urine for while the bloud melted by the heat is thickned by the drynesse there must be a separation of the serous substance which affords matter for urine Medicaments hindring the flowing of the months either shut up the passages by a binding quality or hinder the flux by thickning the humours Every immoderate flux proceeds either from a loosnesse of the passages thinness and movable nature of the humours and therefore by binding up those passages or by the humours acquiring a thicknesse and clamminesse it is easily hindred Those Medicaments which purge the womb are taken from those which move the months especially of you chuse them which are of a cleansing faculty The matter of all these is this Simples helping Conception Roots of Calamus Aromaticus Bistort or Shaleweed Galingal Ciperus Leaves of Betony Sage Rosemary Marjoram Fruits Nutmegs Cloves Flowers of Sage Rosemary Betony Mace Spikenard Gums Styrax Bezoinum Frankincense Mastick Animals Musk Civet Minerals Succinum Amber Coral Compounds Waters of Sage Betony Marjoram Conserves of flowers of Betony Sage Rosemary Acorus candied Walnuts candied Nutmegs candied Myrobalans candied candied roots of Satyrion Confections Treacle Mithridate Electuaries Diamoschum Diambra de Gemmis Diagalanga Aromaticum rosatum Troches of Galliae Moschatae Aliptae Moschatae Externals Oyl of Nard Myrtles Medicaments expelling the Birth and Secundines Those things which move the months bring forth also the birth and secundines being these in particular Cretian Dittanie Mugwort Birthwort Saffron Cinamon-water Confectio Alkermes Borax of the shops Savine Opoponax Sagapenum Myrrhe Castor Assa fetida The two latter are proper only for the secundines because that they kill the childe with their evill smell Medicaments moving the Moneths Simple Roots of both Birthworts Madder Valerian Cyperus Orrice Gentian Barks Cinamon Leaves of Mugwort Mercury Featherfew Nepp or Catmints Sage Calamint Penyroyal Organy Rue Southernwood Horebound Cretian Dittany Seeds of Hart-wort Anise Carrots Fennel Rue Carrawaies Flowers of Camomil Featherfew Saffron Gums Myrrhe Assa-fetida Opoponax Sagapenum Galbanum Animals Castor Minerals Borax of the shops Compounds Waters of Mugwort Cinamon Syrups of Mugwort Hysop Conserves and Electuaries are to be seen among the Diureticks Troches of Myrrhe Externals The Oyls and Unguents are to be seen in the Emollients which shall be delivered in the second Section Medicaments stopping the Months Simple Roots of Lungwort Snakeweed Tormentil Leaves of Plantain Mastick-tree Horsetail Raspis Purslain Myrtle Knotgrasse Mint Seed of Plantain Sorrel Fruits of Myrtles Flowers of Roses Pomegranats Gums Mastick Dragons-bloud Animals Kids rennet Harts rennet Harts-horn burnt Ivory Spodium Minerals Bole armoniack terra sigillata Coral Compounds Waters of Plantain Roses Water-lilly Purslain Mint Syrups of Myrtle Mint Quinces dry Roses Conserves of Roses candied Quinces Confections Philonium Romanum Troches of Spodium of Terra sigillata Externals Oyls of Roses Myrrhe Quinces Unguent Comitissae Emplaister of Mastick plaister against a Rupture Medicaments purging the Womb. The same which move the months and chiefly Briony both Birthworts Gentian Mercury Mugwort Featherfew Horehound Germander c. CHAP. XXVII Of Arthritical Medicaments THE joynts are composed of nervous parts now there being such an affinity between the brain and the nerves those Cephalicks which we have shewn to be inwardly used already may be termed rightly Arthriticks When the humour contained in the joynts is to be prepared by an Apozem or any other internal Medicament the same Medicaments are to be prescribed which are to be applyed in affections of the head of which those are more especially to be chosen which according to the faith of antiquity are more agreeing and specifically proper for the joynts But because affections in the joynts are most commonly cured with Topick remedies those are here to be set down which are most convenient for them and so to be distinguished that some may presently asswage the heat at the beginning if there be any and hinder defluxions of humour yet not fix more deeply the humours into the part inflamed that others may ease the pain that happens without any inflammation and that others the pain being eased may digest the impacted humour which are all to be severally set down Things hindring defluxions Leaves of Henbane Hemlock Nightshade Mandrakes Sempervivum or Ever-live Juices of Henbane Nightshade Lettice Vinegar Opium Gums Caphura Mucilages of the seed of Flea-bane Quinces Waters of Roses Plantain Nightshade Oyls of Roses Easing Pain
Roots of Marsh-mallowes Cows milk Cows dung Sheeps dung Frankincense beaten with the white of an Egge Yolk of an Egge flowers of Camomil Melilot Saffron and many other things set down by practical Authors Digesting Medicines Roots of Elecampane Hermodactyles Leaves of Mullin Ground-pine Nettles Walwort Sage Centaury the lesse Seeds of Nettles Watercresses Gums Opoponax Bdellium Ammoniack Sagapenum Galbanum Euphorbium Animals Castor Live Puppies applyed Liquors Wine Aqua vitae Sea-water water of Sulphurous baths Chymical Oyls of Vitriol Wax of Bricks Emplaisters of Mucilages of Melilot Oxycroceum Diapalma CHAP. XXVIII Of Medicaments increasing and diminishing Milk MEdicaments fit to increase Milk according to Galen de simpl med fac c. 22. moderately heat but dry not for by heating they attenuate the bloud that it may the better be carried to the Breasts neither do they diminish the plenty thereof by drying which must be very much for the generation of milk Things that increase Milk have the same qualities with those things that move the moneths though as to the effects these do seem much contrary to the other for as often as the months are excited to flow so often is the generation of milk impeded But in this they differ that those things which move the months are hotter then those things which increase milk and more attenuating For in the generation of milk there is an expulsion of the bloud to the breasts and an attraction from the same but in the vacuation of the months there is only an expulsion to the womb so that the bloud ought to be more attenuated and the remedies botter and dryer so Gal. c. 21. l. 5. de med fac will have Dill Fennel and Rocket as being green and moist herbs most proper to increase milk but being dry to move the months because then they do heat and dry more They diminish the plenty of milk which by drying consume the bloud or by refrigerating and incrassating render it unfit to be carried to the breasts The matter of all these is this Increasers of Milk Green Fennell seed of the same green Dill Smallage powder of Crystal decoction of Colewort Butter taken with Milk and Fennel Decreasers of Milk Mint Celandine the greater Calamint Corianders Basil sowr Grapes Vinegar Oxymel Camphire CHAP. XXIX Of Medicaments increasing or diminishing Seed THose Medicaments increase Seed and provoke lust which are hot and windy without exsiccation Those things decrease Seed and blunt the sharp prickings of venery which do either immoderately cool or by immoderate exsiccation do consume the seminal matter They are these Increasers of Seed Seeds of Rocket Turnep Nettles Mustard Pepper Fruits Pistachias Pine-kernels Animals Scincus Sparrows brains Cocks stones Decreasers of Seed Lettice Purslain Camphire Mint Rue seed of Agnus Castus Dill. CHAP. XXX Of Medicaments discussing Wind. MEdicaments discussing wind heat and attenuate and resolve the humours proceeding from cold matter by Diaphoresis These are not much distinguished from those that heat and attenuate flegm and therefore are not here to be repeated CHAP. XXXI Of Astringent Medicaments AStringent Medicaments are cold and dry and of an earthy substance which causes them to contract gather and condense the parts This Theorem is most certain of simple astringents which are endued with those qualities yet there are other Medicaments with which other faculties have also an astringent quality through the various condition of the substance as there are many astringents which are hot as Wormwood Mastick Vitriol and others of this nature What ever things were proposed before for the stopping of the Months the some are astringents and therefore not to be here repeated CHAP. XXXII Of Medicaments that kill the Worms WHatever Medicaments are bitter sharp sowr astringent or oily are good to kill the Worms Bitter sharp and sowr things with their tenuity pierce the substance of the worms and dissolve them Astringents by shriveling them up together Oily Medicaments by stopping their pores hinder transpiration by which only they live and so they choke them Yet 't is most certain that there are some Medicaments which kill the worms not only by manifest qualities but by a specifical property For example Mercury which only applied to the belly in oyntments effectually kils the worms in the guts and being inwardly and in due quantity taken and rightly prepared it works wonders Also raw Mercury beaten for some time in fair water communicates its vertue in some measure to it so that the fair water be so used as ordinary drink is very efficacious to kill the worms The matter of those things that kill the Worms is this Simples Roots of Grasse Cowslips Setwall white Dittany Gentian Angelica Mulberry Rhubarb Leaves of Purslain Cichory Sorrel Wormwood Water-germander St. Johnswort lesser Centaury Vervain Hoarhound Cretian Dittany Seeds of Citron Tansie Coleworts Lupines bitter Almonds Juices of Limons Granates Purslain Aloes Animals shavings of Ivory Harts-horn Compounds Powder against the Worms Hiera picra Chymicals Spirit of Sulphur Vitriol Mercurius dulcis CHAP. XXXIII Of Medicaments for Wounds MEdicaments for Wounds are those which by gently binding and drying do forward the conglutination of the wounds Wounds are not only cured by external and topical Medicaments but also by internal which being taken do forward the closing of the wounds of which vulnerary potions are often made The matter of them is this Roots of Lungwort round Birth-wort Setwall Tormentil Leaves of Periwincle Burnet Sanicle Bugle Mousear Pauls Betony Agrimony Centaury the lesse Seeds of Carduus benedictus Animals River Crabs THE FIFTH BOOK The second Particle of the second Part of the first Section Of External Medicinal matter CHAP. I. Of refrigerating and repelling Medicaments IN the External parts do often happen Inflamations Erysipela's Ringworms Carbuncles and such like affections which must be cured by the applying of cooling things especially at the beginning And because these affections proceed most commonly from defluxions therefore those Medicaments in the beginning ought to repell that they may hinder the flux of the humours and keep them from the part affected But Medicaments repell as they have a binding quality of which we treated when we discoursed of internal Astringents But because external refrigerating and repelling Medicaments differ much from the internal therefore they shall be set down here in order Refrigerating Medicaments Simple Rindes of the roots of Nightshade Mandrake Leaves of Lettice the 4. sorts of Endive Henbane Duck-meat Navilwort The foresaid do only refrigerate these that follow do also by refrigeration gently binde Purslain Knotgrasse Plantain Privet Nightshade Semper-vivum or Ever-live Mandrake Seeds of Fleabane white Henbane white Poppy the greater and lesse cold seeds Flowers of Roses Violets Water-lillies Juices of Granates Lottice Purslain Sempervivum Nightshade Plantain Limons Vinegar sowre Grapes Animals the white of an Egge Compounds Waters of Nightshade Water-lilly Roses Plantain Knotgrasse Oyls of Roses Violets Water-lilly Poppy Henbane Mandrake Oyntments of Roses Santaline Cerecloth refrigerans Galeni of Poplar
blood converting as is before mentioned into the substance of the parts to which total conversion are precedent four grand mutations every of which deserves a peculiar name The Unnamed or inbred humor is that which borders upon the smal veines and begins to be slightly changed by the particular members As soon as the blood is conveyed out of the larger vessels into the more narrow which nature hath placed in every part the qualities of that part flow into it and by this change beginning to invest it self in the nature of the part it becomes the first of the four Secundary humors which wanting an imposed name is called unnamed but some moderns have termed it inbred It is then called Dew when like Dew it waters the substance of the parts and is entertained in the smal pores it is generated out of the Unnamed humor but not without much alteration till it is assimilated to the nature of the part It is then called Glue when this rorid humor closes with the parts to an agglutination Lastly it is termed Cambium when this Glue alters into and stands in Analogy with the substance of the parts The discrimination of these two last humidities is understood from the difference distinguishing between union and assimilation This appears by the demonstration of most evident examples for in the Itch the Leprosy and such like diseases there is a sticking and agglutination of much humor yet no assimilation but corruption by the depraved qualities in it whence we may conceive the wide difference between union and assimilation CHAP. VIII Of Excrementitious Humors and first of Excrementitious Choler Hitherto of alimentary humors Excrementitious are those which are not disposed for nutrition but are banished and separated from the body They are four Choler Melancholy Serum and Flegme Excrementitious Choler is an excrement attenuated in the second coction hot and dry of colour yellow of taste bitter the purgation of which is at the bladder of the Gall. ALL coctions have their excrements because all parts of the aliment cannot be fitly designed to nutrition therefore the useful part is separated from the useless and turned out of doores so the excrements of the first coction are the dregs which are conveyed thorough the belly But the excrements of the second Coction are 3 which being referred to the humors are in this place to be explained Now the first excrement of the second coction is a thin humor hot and dry and very bitter therefore of no aptitude for nutrition it is conveyed to the bladder of the gall partly by the expulsive faculty of the Liver partly by the attractive of that bladder which nature hath framed to a familiarity and sympathy with that humor that it might desire and delight in its company It is useful to summon the expulsive faculty of the intestines to her duty and to scoure the sticking flegme which is apt to adhere to the tunicles of the intestines When the felleous bladder hath attracted the choler and for some space entertained its welcome guest till being sharpned by this delay it moves this vessel to an expulsion and is sent to the duodenum by a vessel designed for this office which is called porus cholidochus Now this choler being brought down to the intestines by its acrimony stirrs and moves their expulsive faculty by which our purgaments are with more ease excluded which many times by the intermixtion of choler represent a yellow or reddish tincture And also the intestines usually abounding with much viscid and sticking flegme receive this benefit from the choler that it cuts and purges it away and so helps its exclusion It is differenced two wayes either as it confines it self to its natural constitution or as it dilates it self beyond the proportion and allowance of nature When it is content with its natural limits it is two-fold Yellow and Pale Yellow is that which is contained in the bladder clean and unmixt which was now mentioned Pale is when a Serous humor is mixed with the Yellow Serum mingled with choler washes away its yellowness and induceth palenesse cold and moisture When it is in excesse beyond the bounds of nature the species of it are four Vitelline Porraceous Eruginous and Glasteous The Vitelline in colour and consistency is like the yolk of raw eggs hot to a higher degree than the yellow and is produced from it by the alteration and incrassation of vehement heat When by the acrimony of preternatural heat the natural choler is scorch'd it s thinner parts are dispersed by which means it is incrassated and acquires a deeper grain and more intense heat For we must shut our eares against Avicenna who asserts that the transmutation of yellow choler into Vitelline is caused by the admixtion of flegme for by this reason it would become more pallid and cold Porraceous Choler representing the colour of a Leeke is hotter then the Vitelline and is commonly bred in the ventricle being produced by impure aliments This is green like a leeke which tincture it receives from bad aliments such as garlicke onions leekes watercresses colewortes and the like which by reason of the disability in the ventricle to concoct them and naturalize them to Chyle are parch'd yet generally retaining their own hue from whence this is termed porraceous choler Here it is observable that this happens not but in very hot stomachs It is also sometimes generated in other parts of our body out of the vitelline choler over-heated whence it cloths it self in green Eruginous choler being of the colour of rust is produced by a more parching heat While the porraceous choler delayes its remove out of the ventricle being adust by preternatural and intense heat it alters into eruginous choler The seat sometimes of its generation is the veins by heat very intense which scorches the aforementioned species of choler and is very sharp and malignant hence eruginous dejections are counted by Hippocraies deadly Glasteous choler assimilated in colour to wood is produced from the rest by a greater inflammation and is more dangerous then all of them This is nearly allied to black choler being of a colour more obscure and dul then the rest which is caused by a greater torrefaction therefore it is more dangerous and pernicious then the other A COROLLARY GAlen in his Treatise of black Choler mentions red choler from whence it seems there must be a larger Catalogue of the species of choler but this is not properly choler but the feculency of the blood as Galen himself explaines comment 5. in 6. Epid. CHAP. IX Of Excrementitious Melancholy Excrementious Melancholy is a crasse excrement of the second coction cold and dry of colour black of taste sharp which is purged out at the Milt THat part of the Chyle which is more crasse and feculent so that it is beyond the art of the Liver to change it into alimentary substance is secluded from the masse of blood that that may not be infected with the
that is juyce which is absolutely necessary that the aliments being prepared by that first coction may passe freely thorough those narrow veines which usualy conduct them to the Liver and also those smal veines which are dispersed thorough the substance of the Liver But when the Liver hath discharged its duty in sanguifying there is not further necessity for so much moisture therefore nature segregates the greater part of it which it hath designed to be attracted by the Reins and from thence is excluded to the bladder where it is called Urine but before while it confines it self to the veines it is called Serum Part of which remaining still in the veines is confused with the masse of blood to be the vehicle of the humors which being made more thin and fluid may have an easier accesse to every particle of our body but when this portion of Serum hath performed its office part of it retires to the Reins and accompanies the other Urine part inclines to the bulk of the body and is purged by sweat The office of it is to be a conduct to the alible humors for their easier transmigration thorough the body It is called to this duty as long as it is lodged in the veins but when it hath broke up house there it is useless in the body as choler and melancholy The differences of it are four viz. sanguinious bilious pituitous and melancholick Every humor hath its Serum properly and peculiarly appertaining to it and assimilated to its proper nature and temper so the Serum of the blood is held to be hot moist and somewhat red the Serum of choler hot dry and somewhat yellow the Serum of flegme cold moist and somewhat white and the Serum of melancholy cold dry and of colour dark CHAP. XI Of Excrementitious Flegme Excrementitious flegme is an excrement of the third concoction Cold and Moist of colour white as to the taste insipid or something sweat generated in divers parts but principally in the brain PArts of a cold and moist temper derive their nutrition from pituitous blood from whence proceed many excrements caused either by the coldness of the part it self unapt to concoct perfectly or by the humor it self which being the more crude part of the blood is of a difficult concoction and a great part of it converts into excrements Which is very evident in the brain for that copiously gathers excrementitious flegme which is purged out of the mouth and nose But the brain collects not this flegme solely by the concoction of its proper aliment but by reason of its advanced situation which is the cause that many vapors from the ventricle Liver and other bowels make upward to the head and by the frigidity of the brain are condensed into a waterish matter which is the original of this flegme Hence by reason of the copiousness of flegme congregated in the brain these two wayes Hippocrates and other Physicians have termed the braine The Metropolis of Flegme and Author of all defluxions It is differenced by the taste and consistency of it In relation to the tast it is four-fold Insipid Sweet Acide and salt Insipid proceedes from moderate cold which causeth no tast This is the most natural being an excretion in well disposed bodies conveyed away by the spittle The Sweet is produced from the insipid by a smal alteration of heat When the insipid is concocted by a moderate heat it is sweetned for sweetness is the produce of heat but yet hence we must not inferre that sweet flegme is hot because indeed an intense sweetness signifies heat but not a sleight and moderate one so fruit and milk of a cold temper yet are much sweeter then any flegme The Acide is caused by intense cold inducing Acidity When the smal heat of the flegme is extinguished or dissipated the necessary consequence is acidity no otherwise then as the juyces of many fruites meanly hot being infrigidated become easily acide which fares not so with hotter which do usually retain their soundnesse longer as appears by wine Salt Flegme is produced either by putrefaction or the permixtion of salt serous moisture As Galen in Book 2. of the diff feb cap. 5. It becomes salt by putrefaction because when putrefaction makes a separation between the siccity and humidity and that siccity being parched by a putredinous heat falleth again into conjunction with the humid substance it causeth a salt taste But it proceeds from the permixtion of salt serous humidity which being too much brin'd by intense heat is mingled with the sweet flegme but the serous humidity becomes salt when the action of heat upon it produceth scorched vapours which by permistion with it cause saltnesse Observe that these two species of flegme viz. the acide and salt are preternatural but the sweet and insipid natural As to its consistency it is also four-fold Thin Thick Vitreous and Gypseous The Thin is of a watery consistency very fluid and easily diffusing it self into divers parts Such is that which distilles from the brain thorough the nose and flowes thorough the mouth and is effused also in many parts thorough the middle intervals of the muscles Thick is when this thin hath acquired incrassation and clamminesse by heat The heat by resolution incrassates the thinner parts whence this flegme being gluish is properly called Snot Vitreous flegme is still thick but transparent as liquefied glasse or the white of a raw Egge It is a sturdy doubt and resolved to my knowledg by no Auther why vitreous flegme and that which is termed crasse are for the most part equally crasse yet one is very transparent and diaphanous the other very obscure This in my opinion proceeds from the diversity of the efficient cause which of crasse flegme is heat but of the vitreous cold In the crasse the heat resolves the thinner more airy and waterish parts which cause perspicuity hence it is clouded with opacity but in the vitreous being incrassated by cold not by heat while it is so condensed nothing is resolved but the diaphanous parts remain from whence it seems transparent as is manifest in ice But it will be objected That flegme cannot acquire such a degree of cold in our body that by the force of it it may be condensed and incrassated all our body being actually hot therefore whatsoever is cold is necessarily heated by the part in which it is contained To this I Answer That that flegme to which the vitreous owes its production is exceedingly crude and out-vying the strength of nature therefore it is banish'd her dominious as contumacions and insuperable and remised to its proper nature viz. coldness communicated to it by water and invincible by the weak heat of the parts in which it is contained as the intestines which are the head quarters of this vitreous flegme and doth not seldome torture them with most painfull fits of the Collick for by its glewy nature adhering to the intestiness by its cold it bites
proceeds not from the copiousness of aliment viz. after nutrition performed will in this convincingly appear because experience shews that they grow and fill who use but little nutrition as is evident in boys and youths diseased who though they be very lean are yet continually growing because at such age the auctive faculty is most efficacious and so potent that it plunders the nutritive it self of aliment conveying it chiefly to the solid parts viz. the bones by the extension of which the whole body is extended therefore the aliment by virtue of the auctive faculty is carried to these parts and the carnous parts are defrauded of their due nutriment Hence those that are in growth appear lean On the contrary we find many fat and well stuffed and fed with high delicacies which yet arrive not to a due or decent procerity of body But though to the auctive and nutritive faculties the same object is proposed viz. nutriment yet they use this object in divers relations For the nutritive useth it as it tends simply to the conservation of the substance of the part But the auctive as it is directed to heighten the substance to a just magnitude and quantity For though the substance acquired by nutrition have quantity it being impossible for a material substance to be destitute of quantity yet nutrition regards not the substance as it hath quantity but as it is a substance but accretion is related to it not as a substance but as having quantity So for example as the blood is incarnated so far goes nutrition respecting only the substance of the flesh but as blood is changed into a greater proportion of flesh here enters accretion regarding not the substance of the flesh but only its quantity The end of accretion is not commensurated by life but accretion is most usually extended to twenty five or thirty Nature hath measured out a certain proportion to every living body therefore a living body is so long in a tendency to augmentation as it is in attaining to this determination of time But when it is augmented to a compleat magnitude in obedience to the command of Nature it stops there and makes no further progress Besides because accretion immediately depends upon the extension of the solid parts according to the three dimensions the sequel will be that a body doth so long increase as the parts thereof may in this manner be extended But now in the course of our life the solid parts are so hardened and dryed through the continual resolution of primigenious moisture occasioned by the action of native heat that they will no longer yeeld to extension But though the auctive faculty after the limitation aforesaid operates no more yet we must not assert it corrupted or idle as some fancyed it being not necessary that the faculties of the soul should be alwayes secondly actual and in operation for in our apprehension generation and local motion is not ever actual and therefore also there is no necessity of a continual growth but the faculties upon their arrival to their appointed end repose themselves So the auctive rests upon the assecution of its end viz. the due stature of magnitude After that it is obstructed in its operation having no fit subject viz. a body not disposed to an aptitude for extension The cause therefore sprouts into two branches one taken from the end the other from the subject A COROLLARY Here is obvious a Probleme worthy our knowledge Why all men are not advanced to an equality of magnitude but some are taller others of shorter stature I answer That the cause of this is threefold The first drawn from the various disposition of bodies for the more moist and hot they are the fitter they are for extension and grow more and in less time than cold and dry bodies whose parts submit not so easily to extension The second proceeds from nutrition for the more perfectly and copiously a body is nourished it is of a better and more speedy growth and the more imperfectly and sparingly it hath been supplyed with nutriment it groweth the less and the slower The third cause is the similitude of the Parents for tall Parents generate tall Sons short short ones because the seed transfers the idea and conditions of all the parts from the Parents upon the Children CHAP. V. Of the Generative faculty and of Generation The Generative faculty is that virtue of the Soul by which a man produceth a thing like to himself for the perpetual conservation of his species Hence Generation is a production of something like the producer GEneration according to the Philosophers is twofold Univocal and Equivocal That is termed Univocal when every thing generates something resembling it self such is the generation of all perfect animals Equivocal is when things of a various and dissenting nature are generated such is the generation of imperfect animals whose wombe is putrefaction Therefore univocal generation is principally applicable to perfect animals Hence Mules and Eunuchs are not fit for generation By this it appears that the name of Generation is not used in so large a sense by the Physicians as by Philosophers who call all introduction of form into matter Generation but here it is taken onely for the production of a like thing which is also called procreation To the Generative faculty two other are subservient the alterative and conformative The Alterative is that which alters and changes the subject matter of generation Seed is the subject matter of generation which is incompatible with the nature of various parts unless all its qualities as well first as second be variously changed for this cause the soul is endowed with a peculiar faculty which may execute this duty which is therefore called alterative or immutative The Conformative is that which graphically delineates and effigurates the whole body and all its parts The Conformative faculty entertains the seminal matter altered and prepared and out of it commensurates all the parts of the body and assignes to every of them a due magnitude figure site connexion and all other things commodiously which are requisite for the convenient exercitation of every peculiar action A COROLLARY All other relations to the Generative faculty are more largely disputed in the succeeding Section which treats of the Procreation of Man CHAP. VI. Of the Vital faculty The Vital faculty is that virtue of the Soul by which the vital spirits are generated in the heart and life is preserved in the whole body THE Spirits plainly demonstrate that there is in the Soul a peculiar faculty distinct from the rest which from the fountain of the heart copiously flow into the Arteries but every spirit is the instrument of some faculty But this faculty generates Vital spirits in the heart which spirits are the subjects of the influent heat which two communicate themselves to every part of the body the heat whereof with the implanted spirit they preserve But life necessarily depending upon implanted heat the
whole fabrick furnished with instruments But we suppose that the seed of man doth onely potentially contain the form of man For the soul of man being extrinsecally adventitious we cannot affirm that the seed comprehends the humane soul onely potentially as it hath an aptitude to induce those dispositions which are requisite for the entertainment of a more noble form So neither in other living creatures must we imagine the seed to be actually animate but potentially onely because it hath that conformative power contained in the spirit by which it generates according to its own likeness when the seed is laid in a convenient place and hath subject matter But it is no absurdity to affirm such a power given to the form of seed there being found in many inanimate things as in load-stones rubarb and the like many and notable faculties which have not the advantage of any influence from a soul Yet this point of doctrine is very intricate and notably fenced with difficulties which Sennertus shews us in his Philosophical Hypomnema's Corruption therefore seiseth on the form of the seed upon the first arrival of the soul to the body now fashioned and prepared to welcome this guest which is said to live the life of a plant so long as it is simply nourished but when the organs of sense and motion are compleat it lives an animal or sensitive life and lastly proceeds to the operations of a rational soul when it hath acquired a well tempered brain and disposition of spirits A COROLLARY There hath been a long-started controversie between Physicians and Peripateticks whether women afford prolifical seed For all the Physicians after Hippocrates obtrude the affirmative for the defence of which they appeal to the common experience of women who relate that in that coition by which they conceived they sent out something causing more pleasure Which also the contrivance of feminine parts will serve to confirm Nature having placed in them very large testicles for the elaboration of the seed plenty of which being whitish and well concocted is often found in them in dissection Hence we may conclude that there is no third thing proceeding from the commixtion of male and female seed which is fit for the generation of the Childe But the Peripatericks in obedience to their grand Master Aristotle suppose that the seed of women is termed seed by analogy onely and homonymie concurring not to the generation of the fetus but onely by provoking to coition and useful to moisten the sides of the wombe which assertion they seem to make impregnable by the fortifications of strong reasons First If a woman had prolifical seed she might generate without obliging man to a copulation for she would have the seed and menstruous blood the only two necessaries to generation of the Childe Secondly One being by it self cannot be the result of two actual beings but onely accidentally aggregate Therefore out of two seeds the fetus cannot be produced To which objections and others of the same nature I answer Both seeds as well of male as female though they be prolifical are not sufficient by themselves to generate the fetus but a due commixtion of both is requisite in the wombe by which the delineation of the Embryo is perfected And so out of more compleat beings proceeds not one being by it self but yet out of divers incompleat beings one compleat is produced is an opinion subject to no absurdity CHAP. II. Of Menstruous blood There is not onely a concurrence of the seed but of the Menstruous blood also to the generation of the fetus which is another principle onely material not efficient as seed THE Mothers blood harbours none or very few spirits therefore it hath no efficient virtue but onely supplies matter out of which all the carnous parts are compounded as the spermatick of the seed And this blood is called menstruous because in well affected women which are neither with childe nor give suck it flows out every moneth And the menstruous blood is an excrement issuing from the last aliment of the carnous parts which at certain times and observed limitations is in a small quantity purged out of the wombe for the generation and nutrition of the fetus Hence it appears that menstruous blood is an excrement and useful as to its substance being converted into the parts of the fetus and the nutrition of them And this blood is usually in women plentifully because of the weakness of their heat which cannot digest all the blood made in the liver as also because of their soft and moist temper which breeds plenty of humors Hence it is that that blood exceeding in quantity is returned into the bigger veins from the flesh now filled and as it were satisfied and by them is thrust out by the veins of the wombe The time for the expurgation of this blood is twofold universal and particular The universal is from twelve or fourteen yeers of age to fifty or fifty five Before the twelfth or fourteenth yeer the vessels of women are narrow and the heat almost extinct by the plenty of humors cannot expel the reliques and before that age great plenty of the blood is spent in the augmentation of the body But after the twelfth or fourteenth yeer heat begins to move in a vigorous lustre the vessels are enlarged the breasts swell the body by a pleasant tickling is insinuated into lust and the genitals are fenced with new down But on the other side after fifty or fifty five the effluxions of menstruous blood cease because the heat being weakened is not able any more to generate such plenty of blood as may leave some reliques of which if there be any it cannot commodiously drive them away The particular time is limited by the space of a moneth and that by the space of three or foure dayes This evacuation of the menstruous blood returns usually every moneth which all attribute to the motion of the Moon Emperess of the humors and experience informs us that this purgation is commonly contingent to the more youthful about a new Moon but to the ancient about full Moon This caused that common piece of Poetry The Moon when old she fils the round Old Womens purgaments abound But when her horns begin to grow From Women young purgations flow A COROLLARY Hence is moved a notable question Whether menstruous blood be of a noxious quality The accurate decision of which see in Laurentius Quest 8. Book 8. of his Anatomy CHAP. III. Of Conception Conception is then said to be when the seed of both sexes are coupled and cherished in the cavity of the wombe and their formative virtue is become actual MAle and female while for posterity sake they condescend to venereous copulation send forth their seed together and at the same time the male into the neck of the wombe the female into her proper closet of the womb which wombe hath an admirable propriety of attracting the seed of the male wherefore
Pain A pulsatory pain is a signe of inflammation in the part aggrieved A stupid pain shews a cold distemper A sharp and eroding pain discovers exulceration Vital Actions A great and frequent pulse shews an hot distemper a small and rare one a cold distemper Natural Actions Attraction A dejected appetency and great thirst shews a hot distemper A great appetency and small thirst argues a cold distemper Expulsion Nidorous belching shews a hot distemper but acid a cold Frequent vomiting and excretion of feculencies hindred shews an obstruction lurking in the intestines Generation The appetite to coition being lost signifies a cold distemper A vehement desire of coition with a perpetual and painful erection shews an inflammatory affection Excrements By the mouth Bloud copiously expelled by coughing through the mouth shews a ruption of the vessel but a small quantity permixt with purulent matter an exulceration Belly Fragments ejected through the belly shew exulceration in the intestines Bladder Urine having red and sandy sediments is a sign of the stone or of an hot distemper of the reines scorching the humours Heart Small sweats and frequent interludes of shaking signifie an Empyema 10 Coat 1. By the acrimony of the corruption the internal parts are vellicated which is the cause of trembling but the small sweats proceed from the debilitated faculty Substance Aliments excreted in the same manner as they are taken shew a Lienteria drink if it be expelled unchanged by urine signifies a Diabete Yellow Choler excreted in the beginning of a paroxysme signifies a Tertian Feaver Manner Blood copiously flowing through the nostrils in the beginning of a Feaver signifies a synochical one Bloud flowing abundantly from any part signifies a ruption or anastomosis of the veines but softly sweating out a diapedesis Quality changed Redness in a deep grain in any part speaks a phlegnumous inflammation so redness in the cheeks signifies a peripneumony A Yellow colour shews an Erisipelatous affection so in an exquisite pleurisie the eyes do often appear as it were delineated in yellow colours so the Jaundise doth not seldome succeed bilious Feavers A yellow colour of the whole body without a Feaver shews an obstruction in the bladder of the gall The skin of the whole body preternaturally drawn in a blackish colour signifies an obstruction in the milt CHAP. VIII Of the signes of a great and a small disease A Physician who undertakes the cures of diseases is not sufficiently furnished for it by the bare knowledge of their essential differences by their proper signes for the accidental differences also are to be diligently inquired after that we may pass a certain judgement of them We will therefore propose signes of the chiefest of them viz. of those which are of near necessity to the practise of the Art in respect of which every disease is called great or small gentle or malignant acute or slow and so forth That disease is termed great which is very intense and oppresseth our body with much violence The signes of which are taken from the three heads aforesaid for we judge that disease great which being great in its Essence was produced by great and intense causes and hath great and vehement symptomes all which for clearer instruction are in order to be handled as is described in the following Table noted with the Letter E. E. A Table of the signes shewing a disease to be great or small The signes of a great or small disease are taken either from The Essence The causes Efficient External Internal Helpfull and hurtful Material or subject Effects or symptomes which are either Actions Animal Vital Natural Excrements Qualities changed That we may therefore in proposing the signes of a great disease conform to this Table we shall institute the following theorems The Essence Great distempers or inflammations great tumors great obstructions great wounds or ulcers extended to the full dimensions long broad and deep shew great diseases The Causes External Whatsoever external Causes are very prevalent in affecting our body do usually produce and discover great diseases So long and violent exercise used in a very hot air doth excite a great Feaver Internal Those humours which are nested in our body and which are the ordinary causes of most diseases if they extremely erre in quantity or quality they cause and foreshew great diseases So the bloud copiously abounding or very hot either choler copious sharp or putrified are signes of a great disease Helpful and hurtful Those diseases to which there are none or few remedies profitably many noxiously applied are accounted great Those diseases which outrage the dignity of the principal or the publickly officious parts are in respect of them judged great if they be but accompanied with any other signe of magnitude So a wound though of it self inconsiderable if it be inflicted on the Heart Liver Lungs or other the like parts is counted great in respect of the part affected as also because it produceth great symptomes EFFECTS Animal Actions Whatsoever disease introduceth a deliration profound sleeping immoderate watching privation of sense or motion or a very vehement pain discovers a great disease Vital Actions Whenever we perceive in any sick person a great frequent and difficult respiration a great frequent or else very small pulse we may safely pronounce him troubled with a great disease Natural Actions A small appetite or thirst or on the contrary an insatiable appetite and ever quaffing thirst inconcoction or a long flux of the belly and suppression of urine or a tedious and copious profusion thereof signifie a great disease Excrements A superfluous quantity of excrements or a total suppression of them or a bad colour or a most fetid smell or substance very remote from their natural one are signes of a great disease Qualities changed A Colour of the body very red yellow or pale a tast bitter in the tongue the colour thereof black and much driness declare a great disease A Corollary By these signes before mentioned we may easily discern what diseases they are which deserve the name of small diseases viz. all those in which the mentioned signes are not found CHAP. IX Of the signes of a gentle and malignant disease WE term those malignant diseases which are attended by some malignant and venomous quality and their signes may be derived from the same heads All which shall be in the following Table mark't with the Letter F orderly proposed F. Of the signes of a gentle and malignant disease The signes shewing the benignity or the malignity of a disease are drawn from either The Essence The Causes which are either Material Out of which Aliments Medicaments In which The disposition of the parts Efficient External Necessary Aire Not-necessary Venery Fortuit Wounds Internal Bloud Flegme Divers species of choler Helpful and hurtful Effects which are either Actions Animal Vital Natural Excrements ejected by Vomit The belly Urine Habit. Qualities changed and proper accidents Therefore to follow the series of this Table
or succeeding a Feaver is usually deadly as Hipp. 2. progn Because it ends not the Feaver but signifies the exolution of the native heat Intermitting quartans converted into continuals are for the most part deadly For they shew that the humors are incinerated which is almost irreparable A Pleurisie or peripneumony succeeding an Asthma is deadly Because when the cavities of the lungs are filled with pituitous humor and the lungs are debilitated there can be no anacatharsis and respiration is so hindred by both affections that the sick person must of necessity dye But yet if an anacatharsis be easily made and the other symptomes be not too vehement he may be recovered A Peripneumony after a Pleurifie is bad Aph. 11. Sect. 7. This opinion grounds upon a general axiome proposed by Hippocrates in his book of diseases viz. that the adjunction of one disease to another is a bad signe But a worse when a disease adjoyned is worse then the former worst of all when it happens upon a delumbation of strength A peripneumony therefore being more detrimental then a Pleurisie and when it succeeds that the strength being much broken by the rude oppression of the antecedent disease it is usually extraordinary bad and often deadly Therefore when Hippocrates in his Aph. in less dangerous cases uses the term bad in more perillous deadly he should certainly have used the term deadly here so that Galen may not without cause doubt whether that word bad was by Hippocrates there placed being by his testimony not found in some books The venereal disease is with much difficulty curable in a Leper Because by drying remedies such as sudoriferous the Leprosie is much exacerbated and made farre worse The causes Efficient Diseases caused by bloud are healthy unless they acquire malignity and much putrefaction Vitelline porraceous eruginous and black choler do introduce deadly diseases Material In bodies of a well disposed and laudable temper healthy diseases are most commonly generated The bladder or brain or heart or midriffe or any of the thinner intestines or ventricle or liver being torn it is deadly Aph. 18. Sect. 6. Hippocrates calls those parts torn which are much and deeply wounded So the whole tunicle of the bladder divided to the interiour space cannot be united nor such a wound viz. great and deep in the nervous parts of the midriffe or in the thin intestines But in the ventricle it is sometimes as Galen will have it but seldome cured The reason of this is because the bladder is nervous thin and bloudless whence it is that wounds in the neck thereof are curable because that is carnous But the wounds of the Liver by reason of the copious profusion of bloud are deadly if so be the veines thereof be dissected otherwise wounds which have toucht onely the outward superficies of the liver are curable So the wounds of the brain if they be not very deep are within the compass of skil but if they touch upon the ventricles they are deadly Helpful and hurtful Those diseases which deny all benefit of remedies are accounted deadly and on the contrary those that embrace many as profitable are healthy EFFECTS Animal Actions To be ones self and well disposed to things offered is good but the contrary bad Aph. 33. Sect. 2. Principal For when the mind is sound it is a signe that the brain is well and the membranes thereof as also the spinalis medulla and the whole stock of nerves and those especially which are nearest neighbours to the brain it self so when a sick person is not offended at meat and drink and other things which are offered to him this speaks the ventricle liver and other natural parts to be in indifferent good plight Deliration Now on the contrary if the sick person be in any kind of deliration or be beside his accustomed senses it is alwaies a bad signe So in Hippocrates 1. Epid. Sect. 3. aegr 1. Philiscus the third day was in a total deliration on the sixth day he dyed Again aegr 2 of the same Sect. Silenus the second day was troubled with some deliration the third he slept not at night he could not refrain from much talk laughing and singing on the eleventh day he dyed So also aegr 4. of the same Section In Thasus the wife of Philinus when she had brought forth a girle purgation being made according to nature and otherwise being in good state on the fourteenth after her delivery a great Feaver took her with a trembling the sixth day at night she was extasied to a great deliration and again returned to her senses on the eighth she talked much and rose on the tenth she had little use of her senses on the eleventh she slept remembred all but did quickly fall to her deliration again on the fourteenth she had palpitations all her body over talked much understood little but again soon relapsed to a deliration But about the seventeenth she was speechless on the twentieth she dyed And so aegr 8. of the same Section A great Feaver after supper seised upon Erasinus who dwelled upon the river Boota he passed the night with trouble the first day quietly the night molestiously On the second day there was a total exacerbation deliration at night The third day was troublesome to him with much deliration The fifth morning he returned to himself and understood every thing but at noon he raved much could not contain himself his external parts cold and somewhat pale his urine stopped About sun-set he dyed The like chances may be seen in aegr 12. of the same sect 1. aegr 13. Sect. 3. book 3. Yet we cannot infer from these examples that deliration is necessarily deadly to all sick persons for Hippocrates in the beforementioned Aph. saith onely that it is bad that is that it endangers life though many do frequently escape this danger as is evident in the same Hipp. in 1. Epid. Sect. 3. aegr 3. Where Herophon being taken with an acute Feaver on the fifth day was beside his senses on the sixt in a deliration at night he sweated was cold his deliration remained on the seventh he was foolish at night he returned to his senses slept on the ninth day he sweated was judged and intermitted On the fifth day after he relapsed was judged the seventeenth neither did he rave in this recidivation and in aegr 5. of the same section where the Wife of Epicrates which lay in at the house of Archegetes the second day after her delivery was taken with an acute feaver on the sixt with delirations on the seventh a total exacerbation sleepless she raved on the sixteenth at night troublesome exacerbations she slept not she raved On the eightenth she was thirsty her tongue scorched she slept not she was in a very great deliration she was perfectly judged from her feaver on the eightieth day We may find such like stories book 3. Epid. Sect. 1. aegr 3. and Sect. 3. aegr 7. And therefore though a
same opinion in the place of deadly inserts dangerous Convulsion or an hiccough after much profusion of bloud is bad Aph. 3. Sect. 5. Convulsion followes an immoderate loss of bloud either when the veines and arteries are robbed of that due proportion of bloud which they should contain and being empty are contracted and being contracted contract the nerves or because the veines exhausted attract from the neighbouring parts demanding mutual courtesie and so being dried with long profusion of bloud seek aliment from the nerves which forceth the exsiccated and contracted nerves to a convulst retirement to the fountain head as it were to derive help from it or else because the veines and arteries being immoderately exhausted hurry away not onely the bloud but all the spirits from the extreme parts whence the nerves are suddenly refrigerated hence ariseth an extremporary not a long convulsion not proceeding from a preternatural cause but rather produced by the action of nature and endeavouring to hinder the detriment of this inanition therefore we said before that a convulsion upon a flux of bloud was not alwaies deadly though dangerous because no convulsions caused by inanition wants danger Convulsion or an hiccough upon a superpurgation is bad Aph. 4. Sect. 5. In superpurgation not onely the useless but the useful humors are evacuated therefore the convulsion which succeeds it is by inanition and therefore dangerous So Aph. 1. of the same Section Convulsion upon hellebore is deadly because of the immoderate purgation which succeeds the assumption of hellebore Convulsion and desipience after watching is bad Aph. 18. Sect. 7. Watching saith Galen in his comm is one of those things which do most evacuate and dry and so cause a convulsion by siccity and besides because by long watchings the bloud is made more bilious and by consequence more fit for the stimulation of the nervous parts Cold. Those feavers in which are daily colds have a daily solution Aph. 63. Sect. 4. It holds not onely true in quotidian but in tertian and quartan recourses that feavers are resolved by a precedent coldness and hence we collect that there is no danger in coldness of intermitting feavers and that it gives no cause of fear Coldness in continual feavers happening on a critical day with the precedent signes of concoction and a remarkable evacuation following is healthy Good evacuations following such colds are copious sweats vomits dejection of the belly or flux of bloud by which feavers are either wholly taken away or much remitted of which Hippocrates Aph. 58. Sect. 4. A solution of a burning feaver is caused by supervening coldness Which is thus to be understood viz. if it happen with the mentioned conditions So in Hipp. 3. Epid. Sect. 2. aegr 5. Cherion Demenetus his guest was taken after a drinking match with a great feaver on the third day with an acute feaver trembling of his head and most of all his lower lip a while after he was cold convulst was fond in all passed the night with trouble on the fourth he had some quiet slept a little talked On the fifth day he was troubled all exacerbated he was fond passed the night with molestation slept not On the sixth day in the same condition On the seventh day he was extreme cold taken with an acute Feaver sweated all over was judged this man all along had bilious dejections few and sincere from his belly thin urine well-coloured having a cloudy enaeorema About the eighth day his urine was better and more coloured having a white small sediment he was in his senses without a Feaver he intermitted But about the fourteenth day an acute Feaver surprised him and he sweated On the sixteenth he vomited bilious matter yellow somewhat copiously On the seventeenth he was extreme cold and seised by an acute Feaver he sweated was without a Feaver and was judged his urine after his relapse and Crisis was of a better colour having sediment neither was he fond in his recidivations on the eighteenth he was a little hot thirsted had thin urine cloudy enaeorema was somewhat disipient About the nineteenth he was without a Feaver was pained in his neck had sediment in his urine on the twentieth was perfectly judged In this sick person cold first happened on the third day to no purpose as well because that day is seldome decretory as for that there appeared not any signes of concoction neither followed there any excretion and so all the before proposed conditions of good cold were wanting but the cold happening on the seventh day was healthy because it appeared on a critical day with the precedent signes of concoction for his urine was indeed thin and of a good colour having a cloudy enaeorema with copious evacuation for he sweated all over therefore on the eighth day which followed the Crisis he was without a Feaver yet the disease was not wholly taken away but very much diminished for we said before that by such colds Feavers were either taken away or very much diminished and the morbifick cause being not wholly driven away by the mentioned sweats he relapsed which on the seventh day a cold again followed in company with the aforesaid conditions viz sweats and concocted urine therefore his Feavers left him again and he was on the twentieth day perfectly judged That is also observable in this history which is remarked by Hipp. in both colds which happened on the seventh and the seventeenth day that the Feaver was much inflamed for in both places he saith he was cold and taken with an acute Feaver whereas in all Critical cold the more the body is heated the better and more perfect judication followeth for this declares nature strong and to operate powerfully the exclusion of the morbifick matter Colds after which the body is not at all or very little heated are bad For they signifie nature to be in a languishing condition and unable to make head against the morbifick cause whence Hipp. in 1. Prorrhet refrigeration not resuming heat after coldness is bad For that as Galen in his comm writes denotes an extinction of heat Which Hipp. also observed in 3. Epid. Sect. 2. aegr 12. Where a woman on the seventh day was extreme cold was taken with an acute Feaver much thirst jactation about evening sweated all over cold her extreme parts were refrigerated she was no more hot and again at night was extreme cold on the seventh day she was not reinvested with heat on the fourteenth day she dyed If a coma succeed a coldness or trembling falling on a Critical day death is to be expected Coldness happening not on a Critical day or that which none or a bad evacuation followes is pernicious So in the woman mentioned coldness often appeared even on not Critical daies without any excretion or cold sweat which is a bad evacuation so again History the eleventh Section 1. book 1. Epid. The wife of Dromeada was extreme cold on the third day with an universal but a
and passages by which the brain doth usually unburden it self But the chief and most troublesome affection of the brain is inflammation which if it proceed to suppuration and purulent matter be evacuated by the ears which in this case is the more ordinary way the consequent is the solution of the disease In children copious humidities issuing through the ears are healthy Such humidities are frequent in children according to the experience of Hipp. Aph. 24. Sect. 3. and they are healthy because in that age the brain being very moist and abounding with excrements purgeth it self healthfully not by the ears onely but by other passages also The feculencies of the ears which are naturally yellow and bitter if they sweeten or change colour it is very bad Hipp. 6. Epid. Galen in his comment affirmes this to happen by the colliquation of the brain in acute Feavers or we may say that upon much debilitation of the native heat these watrish humidities stream forth which were contained in the brain and being confused with those dregs they change the tast and colour of them Through the nostrills Bloud flowing well and copiously through the nostrills on a Critical day is healthy For then this evacuation is caused by the good operation of nature expelling the morbifick cause but we must diligently observe how the signes of concoction proceeded and whether there be any malignity lurking in the disease because in malignant diseases such fluxes of bloud are not seldome unprofitable Fluxes of bloud too copious and vehement are very bad for they cause convulsion For it sometimes happens that nature oppressed with the copiousness of bloud and moved to excretion becomes irregular and effects a supercrisis which Physicians are often forced to restrain Flux of bloud in the beginning of a disease is bad Because in the beginning of a disease no evacuation can be Critical but is meerly symptomatical yet it is not therefore deadly but onely useless and not commodious to the sick person as it happened to Pericles in 3. Epid. Sect. 3. aegr 6. out of whose left nostril on the third day bloud flowed afterward his Feaver was very intense and persevered to the fourth day in which by copious sweat he was judged A flux of bloud happening in a direct line to the part affected is good but on the contrary bad In the inflammation of the liver a Critical flux of bloud is healthy but with this caution that evacuation be made through the right nostril for if it proceed through the left it will not regulate it self to that rectitude so much applauded by Hippocrates and it will shew that nature upon a perturbation operates preposterously So in the inflammation of the milt the bloud must flow through the left not the right nostril Few drops of bloud distilling through the nostrills are bad For they signifie the imbecillity of nature and malignity of the disease for all excretions in acute diseases which are inchoate onely and not perfected are very much disliked by Hippo. because the security is greater in those Feavers in which nature expells nothing then in which it makes few and useless excretions for then this argues that she is industriously labouring coction To this adde that if no drop appear the benignity of the matter is declared which is unable to provoke nature before the time So in Hipp. 1. Epid. aegr 1 Phyliscus on the fifth day had few drops distilling from his nostrils and on the sixth day he died And Aegr 11. of the same Sect. on the fourth day some few distillations issued from the nostrils of the wife of Dromeada and on the sixth day she died Yet upon this signe we cannot positively assert death for in 3. Epid. Sect. 1. Aegr 2. He who lay in Dealces garden had on the second day some few sincere effluxions of bloud from his left nostril and again on the fourth few and sincere distillations out of the same nostril and on the fourtieth day he was judged Yet he struggled with a very dangerous disease as appears through the whole relation of the story therefore this distillation of bloud if it portend not death yet it shews very great danger of life if it be accompanied by other bad symptomes For this also is to be noted viz. that a small excretion of bloud appearing in an indicative day without dangerous signes antecedent or consequent is so far from being dangerous that it rather denounces that a Crisis will come the same way as happened to Meton in 1. Epid. Sect. 1. aegr 7. who on the fourth day without the precedency of any dangerous symptomes had twice a small effluxion of bloud out of the right nostril on the fifth one larger out of his left sincere he sweated and was judged and fell to a recidivation he escaped upon the copious and frequent profluxion of bloud By the mouth spetting and sneezing Spettle white even smooth not very thin or crass of a ready and easie excretion and without any pain or much coughing is healthy For it denotes that nature overpowers the morbifick matter and laudably concocts and sufficiently expels it being concocted For the mentioned qualities appearing in spettle are signes of very good concoction Spettle soon appearing in the beginning of a disease of the breast or lungs is good Aph. 12. Sect. 1. For this discovers a rudiment of concoction which if it proceed soon after the beginning of the disease there is hope of a speedy solution Spettle lightly red by the permistion of bloud and flegme is healthy This spettle is expelled in a pleurisy when nature changes the morbifick matter for it doth by degrees extenuate it to liquation and so the waies being freed by which the vapour should exhale the thinner part and most acceeding to vapor steals through the rarity of the pores into the internal and neighbouring spaces and is confused with flegme whence upon coughing and exclusion of spettle the default of coction appears and hence Gal. comment in 6. Epid. termes these most gentle pleurifies Yellow spettle mixt with some bloud in the inflammations of the breast or lungs expelled in the first invasion of the disease is healthy and very commodious but when the disease hath proceeded to the seventh day or made a larger progress it is less secure Hipp. in Coac and prognost In inflammations produced by choler and bloud such spettle usually happens which if it appear upon the beginning of the disease it shews that nature doth partly unburden herself whence proceeds a looseness in the part and remission of pain and so the beginning of sanation But if this spettle appear after the disease hath made some progress on the seventh or eleventh day onely it is a signe of less security because the faculties requisite to cause an anacatharsis are oppressed by the disease so that we cannot conceive hopes of a laudable operation as also because the morbifick matter is more rebellious the more thin and obedient part of which could not
be thrust forth in the first daies and again for that by a delayed hesitation in the part it hath insinuated it self to a settlement in the substance thereof so that it cannot without more difficulty be removed All spettle is bad which doth not allay pain Hipp. 2. progn All evacuations are to be judged good or bad as they redound to the benefit of the person if therefore the pain be not mitigated by anacatharsis it is undoubtedly bad for either the matter immediately producing the disease is not ejected or if any part of it be evacuated it is supplied by new which hinders the diminution of the disease A small quantity of spettle though concocted if it be not expelled conformably to the disease is bad Because no small quantity is Critical and cannot cause any remission this spettle therefore is in a peripneumony dangerous according to Hippocrates in Coac such as Hipp. observed 7. Epid. in the wife of Euxenus who died of that disease To spet nothing at all in a pleurifie or peripneumony after some progress of the disease is exitious Though nothing be expelled in the beginning of the disease it is not so dangerous but in the augmentation or state if there appear no spettle it signifies the disease to be very crude and shews the inflammation to be contumacious and of difficult concoction Hence Hippocrates in Coac averred with good cause that dry pleurifies in which nothing was expelled by spettle were most dangerous and Gal. 2. of Crisis chap. 10. When saith he a passion is exquisitely narrow and confines as it were to it self the whole streams of fluxes then it causeth deadly diseases And in his book of the times of the whole disease he affirmes that to spet nothing at all with great pain and difficulty of spiration is destructive If spettle after appearance be suppressed and the lungs being full boyle up in the throat causing a ratling and ebullition it is deadly For this either signifies a very high inflammation which by scorching the spettle reduceth it to such a viscidity that it cannot be expectorated but adhering to the cavities of the lungs and obstructing them induceth a suffocation or it shews an exolution of strength which cannot produce an anacatharsis whence it is that all those that dye of a pleurisie or peripneumony when they stand at the brinks of the grave are subject to such a ratling Such a ratling Hipp. observed 7. Epid. in Menon of whom he saith His arteries did leap with ratling and of the wife of Theodorus A kind of shrill asperity of the artery and breast a noise and fluctuarion of purulent matter and of the wife of Polycrates within about the artery and jaws there was an hissing or according to interpreters an unpleasant asperity In which and many other persons in the same book recited this symptome was to be imputed partly to the weakness of nature partly to the copiousness and clamminess of purulent matter flegm or some other humor This being perpetually bad and very much to be feared yet it is extremely pernicious after the beginning of the disease upon the languidness of strength for it discovers that nature is so infirm that she is not able to expel any thing and so is suffocated which also other desperate signes will evidence which will be the necessary concomitants of it But in the beginning it sometimes happens that by reason of the copiousness and clamminess of the humor it boyles in the throat which humor being afterward concocted and purged by spettle that ebullition ceaseth But that this is not pernicious will appear for that there are other good signes without the company of any pernicious one as happened in Pisistratus of whom saith Hipp. he had a ratling in his jaws but he bore the disease well was of asound mind remiss heat and excretion and the ratling came forth together Lastly in the paroxysmes of asthmatical persons such a ratling and that very intense doth usually happen with an hissing without any danger which is diligently to be observed lest we erre in prognostication White spettle and meerly pituitous in a pleurisy and peripneumony is bad Such spettle may deceive unwary Physicians as much resembling that spettle which is excreted in a natural state and so in its first appearance seems to promise health Yet it is very bad because it shews no expurgation of the humor which causeth inflammation and so demonstrates the disease to be very crude and extremely pernicious Which Hipp. observed 7. Epid. in the wife of Euxenus who dyed of a pleurisy for she by spettle expelled a smal quantity of matter white and thin Spettle yellow pale or ruddy appearing in healthy persons whether it be bitter or sweet shew the appropinquation of a Phthisis and from thence death For such colours signifie choler lurking in the lungs which in the spettle hath lost much of its amaritude by the permistion of flegme by the sweetness of which the acrimony of the choler is asswaged In which Physicians may easily erre and be deceived who are ignorant of the bilious humor lurking in the lungs because that spettle though it appear yellow pale or ruddy they observe not whether it be sharp or bitter Yet in those sick persons the lungs being consumed spettle bloudy or purulent is after expelled and so they pine away Of these Galen speaks 4. of affected places cha 9. in a context worthy notice and so much conducing to this thing that his words may deservedly be transferred to this place One saith he suddenly spet forth humor in colour much resembling liquid choler viz. communicating of yellow and pale and tainted with no acrimony and so did daily send forth by spettle a greater quantity of it afterward upon the surprisal of a slight Feaver he begin to pine so that he expelled purulent matter by excreation After in some space of time viz. of four months he cast out small quantity of bloud with purulent matter and so was more wasted with an acute Feaver and often and again spet more so that the spettle increased to a great quantity the Feaver therefore more increasing and the strength being debilitated he dyed like those who pine Again I saw another troubled with the same disease six months and another longer The first seemed in the beginning to be not very badly affected but afterwards dangerously But when we saw the other we presently upon the beginning of the disease knowing the evil endeavoured by a present medicine to afford help and much more to the third But though we took much pains to free both yet no one could preserve either of these for being now approximated to death they spet forth putrid parts of their lungs Thus Galen but it affords cause of wonder that upon the appearance of yellow or pale spettle vacant of any sharp bitter or salt tast men should be reduced to pining But this is caused for that by the mixtion of pituitous humor the tast in
loosness do stop as soon asit begins it shews that the evil humors which began their course through the guts are turned another way where they may do more mischief Of these speaketh Hippocrates in these words in 7. Epid. The bellies though by chance they were loosened yet presently were perniciously bound up Hence it proceeds that those fluxes and dysenteries which are suddenly stopped are wont very much to endanger the life of the patient The Quality A watry loosness which begins with an acute disease and tarries with it is evil For it signifies an abundance of the matter causing the disease or the malignant quality thereof which forceth nature to such an immature and unseasonable flux Thus Hippocrates speaks in 3. Epid. Sect. 2. aegr 8. of a young man whose belly flowed the first day with much cholerick and thin matter the second day sollowed a greater flux of matter more indigested and the seventh day he dyed Aegr 10. the same Sect. he speaks of a woman whose belly flowed the first day with much thin and crude matter the second day with much more of the same and the seventh day she dyed her belly remaining moist with much thin and undigested matter all the while A loosness of the belly happening to one taken with a pleurisie or a peripneumony or inflammation of the lungs is an evil symptome Aph. 1. Sect. 6. For when the organs serving for respiration are vehemently afflicted the liver and the stomach are thereby also strongly affected so that they being weakened there follows a loosness of the belly which for that reason uses to be mortal Therefore to make good this symptome the pleurisie or inflammation of the lungs ought to be exceeding vehement which Hippocrates seems to intimate as Galen observes in his Comment upon this Aphorism who doth not simply say that a loosness is evil in a Pleurisie or inflammation of the lungs but addes the words being vehemently taken with as if he should have said that a loosness of the belly seising upon a person detained and vexed with such diseases was an evil symptome Because a looseness of the belly happens to such men through a weakness of the liver that is not able to draw the nourishment to it nor to turn it into blood the stomach also oftentimes corrupting the said n ourishment but in a moderate pleurisie or inflammation of the lungs when a loosneses doth happen it may profit much by way of evacuation specially if the disease be so gentle that there is no great fear of any danger also if there do appear certain signes of concoction both in the urine and spettle Sometimes also at the beginning of a pleurisie or inflammation of the lungs the foresaid matter diverts it self to the guts and causes a wholesome and seasonable flux For one that is troubled with an Opthalmia to have a loosness is a good signe Aph. 17. Sect. 6. By such a flux of the belly in this case the humor is drawn down to the most distant opposite parts and from the upper parts to the lower which is therefore of all things the most efficacious and profitable The liquid excrements of the belly growing thick in the progress of the disease betoken well All concoction is perfected by thickening and those things which are concocted become more thick and therefore excrements which at first being thin and liquid do afterwards grow thick by degrees do shew that nature is strong that performs her work so well White fluxes appearing in any disease are evil For the fluxes of white matter are caused by undigested meats as white bread milke Ptissan or unhusked Barly Rice Almonds and such like or as Galen teacheth in 2 Progn when the choler can by no means come to the intestines which happens either through an obstruction of that pipe which conveyes it from the bladder of the Gall to the Guts as comes to pass in the yellow jaundise or because that the Choler is drawn upward with the blood by the heat of the head which is inflamed or lastly those white fluxes are caused by a melting of some soft and new made fat But these are few slimie and of an evil savour However they happen unless it be those that take the white colour from the colour of the meat in acute diseases they are not a little to be condemned but most of all those which happen when the brain is inflamed of which Hippocrates in Prorrhet In those who are phrenetick a white flux is naught because all the choler is then drawn up into the brain Moreover in cholerick feavers white fluxes are evil because the excrements ought to answer to the cause of the disease and therefore they signifie either an obstruction of the pipe through which the choler passeth to the guts which obstruction for the most part is mortal to such as are not in feavers of which Hippocrates speaks in Coac Persons troubled with the Kings evil whose feculencies flow forth in a great quantity dye and in them a white flux proceeds Or it signifies an inflammation of the brain and the upper convex part of the Liver which draws all the choler to them Lastly we have shewn that little slimy and ill-smelling fluxes are evil because they denote a mischievous colliquation or melting of the fat Vitelline eruginous green pale black variously coloured or very ill-savoured fluxes are evil 2. progn All these fluxes are evil for the same reasons which we have above rehearsed Yet sometimes they may be cast forth critically and advantageously if in the urine there do appear the signes of concoction as you may see in Hippocrates in 1. Epid. Sect. 1. Aegr 14. where Melidia who lay sick in the Temple of Iuno was first taken with a strong pain of the head neck and breast presently followed an acute feaver the sixth day she became comatous troubled and dismayed new raving fits with a redness in her cheek and some deliration the seventh she sweat the feaver remitted her pains remained and the feaver returned Her sleep was little her urine well coloured but thin to the end The fluxes of her belly cholerick acrimonious very little and those black and ill smelling a smooth and white sediment was in her urine she sweat and upon the eleventh day the crisis was perfectly made The manner of excretion Liquid excrements of the belly with pain and a dysenteria or a laborious and frequent dejection are evil For they signifie a very great sharpness of the humours which gripes prickes and gnaws the guts exceedingly Which Hippocrates observes in 1 Epid. in many who have died of malignant seavers of which he saith Their bellies were loosened and they often let forth little matter but cholerick sincere thin watry and full of acrimony a little after These diseases which afflicted these persons were dysenteries tenesmus lienteries and fluxes of the belly which he also observed in 3. Epid. Sect. 2. Aegr 6. of the daughter of Euryanax who the twelfth day
man escape that ever made such water yet it is less pernicious if the sediment be only black and still less dangerous if onely that which is in the middle be black and much less it is to be feared if the cloud appears onely of that colour Yet here it is to be noted that black urines are not alwaies evil For first in melancholy persons such urines may be critically made As Galen in comment in 3. Epid. Sect. 3. text 74. relates that he knew a certain woman who was much helped by the evacuation of such waters Secondly in splenetick persons black urines may be safely voided that is when the spleen empties it self through those parts as happened to Herophon in 1. Epid. Sect. 3. aegr 3. who being oppressed with an acute Feaver from the beginning to the fifth day made black and thin water the fifth day his milt swelled the eighth day the swelling ceased his urine was more coloured and had a little settlement the seventeenth the disease had a prosperous judgement Thirdly urines of this nature being joyned with an efflux of blood from the nose are less dangerous because the thinner and hotter parts of the blood wherein the danger lay is voided by bleeding as you may see in 1. Epid. Sect. 3. Aegr 7. where Meto being taken with a Feaver the fourth day there flowed out of his right nostril a little blood twice his urine was blackish having a blackish matter hanging in the middle dispersed without settlement the fifth day clear blood flowed more copiously out of the left nostril he sweat was judged After the Crisis he was walking and talked idle making thin and blackish water he slept and came to himself his fit returned not but he bled often and that after the Crisis Fourthly black urine appearing upon a suppression of the months when they flow copiously they cause a solution of the disease as for example in 3. Epid. Sect. 3. Aegr 11. where mention is made of a woman of whom judgment was made the third day of that made thin and black water but at the time of the Crisis her courses descended very plentifully The Quality Much urine and well concocted upon the decretory day are good For they shew that the matter causing the disease is overcome by nature and is conveniently expelled through the proper places Such urines Hipp. observed in Nicodemus of whom he saith that on the twenty fourth day he made much white water wherein was much sediment and was judged with sweating and of Pericles the same Hipp. speaks that the third day the Feaver was asswaged much concocted urine appearing in which was much sediment then also he saith that Chaerion was saved by making much bilious urine Much urine thin and watry without any contents in it profit nothing are evil For they proceed from a multitude of excrementitious and crude humors or from a hot distemper of the kidneys which is thought to cause a diabete or from a colliquation of the whole body whence proceeds a great dissolution of the natural heat So 3. Epid. Sect. 2. Aegr 12. a certain woman on the eighth day made much water without any profit or amendment and the fourteenth day died Little urine and thin not answering to the quantity of drink taken in any disease are evil For it shews a weakness of the separating and expulsive faculty or an intense heat parching up the moisture of the body as appeared in the wife of Dromeada and in the youth of Metibza and in the daughter of Euryanactes and in the woman that lay ill at the house of Pisamenus and in her that lay ill at the house of Pantimedes all which persons made thin and little water and soon afterwards died Stoppage of the urine in acute diseases is pernicious For the suppression of urine in acute diseases as Galen teaches in his comment in 3. Epid. is caused either by a fiery heat consuming the serous humors of the bloud or by an extinction of the natural functions as happened to Silenus whose urine stopped the fixth day the seventh day he made no water and the eleventh day he dyed Also in a woman that lay sick of a quinsie in the house of Ositon at Cizicum and a youth of Morlibia whose urine stopped a little before their death But that is the worst suppression of the urine that follows a coldness of the body as Hipp. teacheth 1. Coac Sect. 1. Aph. 5. after coldness pernicious is that suppression of the urine that precedes a coldness of the body because it signifies a critical evacuation which will be accomplished especially by sweating So on the other side it is worst of all when it follows that coldness because it shews that the action of the bladder is totally destroyed and that the heat thereof is extinguished by that perfrigeration The contents the urine Urines that have either sediment or matter hanging in the middle nor cloud are evil Those urines wanting content are evil if it be not caused by famine labour or watching or a nephritical disposition of the reins or that the bodies were not very cholerick For they signifie great crudity of humors or concoction of them or weakness of the bowels or inflammation of them or else vehement obstructions Urines that have little sediment are evil They indeed are less evil then those that have no contents because they proceed from the same though from lesser causes of these speaks Hipp. in 1. Epid. Thin urine and unconcocted discoloured and little or having thickness and few sediments are evil The sediments that appear like meal are evil those that appear like slates are worse but those that seem like bran are worst of all Hipp. 2. prog These kind of settlements according to Galen 1. of Crit. chap. 12. are caused by an immense heat melting and burning the fat and the very substance of the flesh But when this burning heat preys upon the solid parts first it assails the more soft and newly substantiated fat afterwards the more solid and when all the fat is melted and consumed then it falls upon the more tender and newly compacted flesh after that upon the more solid flesh and lastly upon the most solid parts themselves By the new fat thus melted by the heat of the Feaver are caused oyly urines But by the more solid fat being melted as also from the flesh raggedly dissolved and likewise from thick blood parched are caused those sediments resembling meal as Galen teacheth in comment of this Prognostick From the solid parts unequally dissolved proceed those sediments which are like slates as also those resembling bran when the heat is more intense whence it plainly appears that the slaty sediments are worse then the mealie ones and the brannie sediments worse then the slaty how pernicious those sediments are will appear by the judgement of Galen of that resembling meale which is not so bad as the rest in Com. in Aph. 31. Sect. 7. he thus writes such urines are
the heart and principal bowels so that it cannot extend it self to the exteriour parts and therefore those who are in that manner cold are very weak neither do they receive warmth again but are approching to death which Hipp. testifies in Prorrhet As often as the patient finds himself cold after the cold fit of a Feaver and does not again wax warm he is in an evil condition This is confirmed in 1. Epid. Sect. 1. Aegr 1. where Philiscus the fifth day had all his extreme parts cold which did no more afterwards wax warm the sixth day he dyed So aegr 1. of the same sect Silenus the sixth day had all his extreme parts cold and blew the seventh day they recovered not warmth again and the eleventh he dyed So aegr 8. of the same sect Erasinus the fifth day about noon had all his extreme parts cold and somewhat blew and the same day about sunset he dyed Also 3. Epid. Sect. 2. aegr 11. The woman which after an abortion was taken with a Feaver had all her extreme parts cold from the fourth day to the seventh in which day she dyed yet sometimes that coldness of the extreme parts not lasting nor often returning uses to be good for it shews that the Crisis is at hand at which time the heat is called back to the internal parts to expel the cause of the disease as happened to him that lay sick in the garden of Dealces 3. Epid. Sect. 1. Aegr 3. who the seventeenth day had all his extreme parts cold afterwards an acute Feaver and a sweat over his whole body and recovered Coldness of the nostrills continuing all the time of the disease in little children is mortal Coldness of the tongue continuing some few dayes is mortal as was observed in three sick persons in whom no other extraordinary symptomes appeared but a certain languishing of the strength Those who are often hot and cold by turns are in danger 2. Prorrh text 32. For thereby is fignified an abundance of the morbifick cause and the malignant quality thereof against which nature enters the lists in vain whence follows a dissolution of the natural heat and at length death it self As. Hipp. notes in 3. Epid. Sect. 2. Aegr 12. where a woman was troubled with a shaking cold fit the seventh day had an acute Feaver about evening her extreme parts waxed cold she waxed warm no more at night she had a shaking fit again but yet her extreme parts waxed not warm the tenth day they received warmth on the eleventh they grew cold again on the fourteenth she dyed and so 3. Epid. Sect. 3. Pythion the second day had a refrigeration of the extreme parts after some time they waxed warm again on the third day they grew a little cold again the fourth day they grew cold and after that warm again on the eighth day he had a coldness in the morning at evening he waxed warm again on the tenth he was very cold had an acute Feaver much sweat and dyed The second Hardness The skin of the face and other parts being hard rough and squallid shew evil For in acute diseases it denotes a great driness caused by the heat of the Feaver but in diuturnal Feavers it shews a great consumption of the natural moisture as in Hecticks So 3. Epid. Sect. 3. aegr 15. in the wife of Dealces on the seventeenth day she had a dry stretching of the skin and the one and twentieth day dyed And aegr 16. of the same sect in the young man of Moelibea on the tenth day his skin was dry and stretched out and the twenty fourth day he dyed An extraordinary softnes of skin in any disease is evil For in acute diseases it signifies an extraordinary putrefaction which causes the parts of the body to flag as appears in corps killed with a pestilent feaver In chronical diseases it shews an abundance of flegme dispersed over the whole body as happens in a leucophlegmatia or dropsie arising from white flegme An intense redness of the face with sadness is evil 2. Prorrh The colour redness of the face simply considered is not evil for it shews sometimes the near approching of the Crisis by a flux of blood as Galen by this signe foretold of a Roman youth in presence of other Physicians But then the signes also of concoction ought to appear but if while the disease is raw the face appear very red there is much fear of an inflammation and especially of the head and brain for by this signe it is apparent that the blood is carried up into the head and there inflames it which causes sadness to precede the phrensie because that blood being burnt up by excessive heat turns to the nature of choler as Galen teacheth in his comm in these words When therefore the colour of the face appears fresh and the patient is very sad there seems to be a certain hot affection in the brain which burns up the blood and for that cause as is demonstrated begets black choler Intense and as it were erysipelatous redness appearing in the head and feet in acute diseases with good signes are good with evil bad If they appear with good signes they shew that nature is very strong and able to expel the noxious humors to the ignoble parts whence that is to be esteemed a laudable change which the ease of the patient necessarily followeth but if they appear with evil signes and the sick person be no whit alleviated it is to be thought that the humors are stirred up by access of new forces viz. by a multiplication of that phlegmonous quality which oppresses the entralls An extraordinary paleness chiefly in the face is evil For it shews either a violent withdrawing of the heat to the inner parts or an extinction thereof or want of blood which is the reason that that colour appears in the carcasses of deceased persons A blackness and blewness of the whole body face or extreme parts is evil For it is caused through an extinction of the heat in those parts as Hipp. teaches 2 prog if the body be in such a condition that the nails and fingers are blew death is presently to be expected But that blewness is alwaies accompanyed with a coldness of the extreme parts as you may see in the examples of Philiscus Silenus and others for the coldness of the extreme parts above recited Black and blew flesh on a bone diseased is bad Hipp. Aph. 2. Sect. 7. By a diseased bone Hippocrates means that which is affected with a wound ulcer or rotenness Now the flesh grows black and blew in wounds or ulcers either through the extinction of the heat some gangrene or syderation by reason of the greatness of inflammation or through some bruise And therefore when the flesh of a corrupt or violated bone looks black and blew not caused by any bruise or syderation it is a certain signe of putrefaction which extinguishes the natural heat and therefore that bone is
pencil by him described 2 Coac and 1 prog in these words His countenance was of this nature his eyes hollow his nose sharp his temples fallen his ears cold and contracted the skin of his forehead hard stretched and dryed the colour thereof pale or black blew or leaden all which things proceed from most pernicious causes for the parts of the face are either truly lean the substance thereof being consumed or else it hath a seeming leanness caused by a withdrawing of the spirits and blood For they give a lively and fresh colour to every part and a moderate moisture which falls away when these are withdrawn then also there is an external cold that presses down the several parts causing a greater extenuation The heat which is most intense and malignant causes a consumption of the flesh But the withdrawing the spirits and blood from the several parts is caused by the great weakness of the natural heat that it cannot recruit it self again or by reason of the great fire within which draws the bloud and spirits to it like a cupping-glass And therefore all those great causes of extenuation which appear in the face are very bad and those particles which Hipp. hath reckoned up are most capable of extenuation For the eyes are very fat and full of spirits which causes them to swell and hang out if therefore that fat be consumed and the spirits be exhausted the eyes fall down leaving the places which they did possess for the most part empty which makes the eyes hollow In the nose the end or point onely somewhat thick for the other parts are bones gristles and skin without flesh In the tip thereof onely are certain thin and fleshy fibers produced from the muscles that move the cheeks and therefore in that part of the nose doth chiefly appear the extenuation caused by the disease the hollowness of the temples are full of very moist muscles which is the cause that greyness begins usually at the temples which moisture is quickly diminished by the above mentioned causes The cars are not without reason cooled though the weakness or retreat of the natural heat both because they are extreme parts remote from the fountain of heat and also because they are without flesh being onely composed of gristle and skin the tips of them also are contracted and the skin of the forehead stretched drie and hard by reason of the drought caused by consumption of the moist parts as skins which being dryed are contracted and shriveled up together The pale colour black or blew proceeds from the withdrawing or exolution of natural heat and spirits whence these refrigerated parts receive that colour In the last place take notice that this death resembling face that shews it self by the abovementioned signes is most pernicious if it be produced by the internal causes before described for if it pro ceed from procatarctical causes it is less dangerous as Hipp. notes in this theorem where he reckons only watching and loosness of the belly but we may adde to that other procatarctical causes as the effect of nourishment sadness and fears And it may be easily discerned whether it depend on these outward causes for then the symptome lasts but one day presently the patient returns to his former state In the eyes You must well consider how the eye is affected when the patient sleeps for if there do appear any thing white under the eyelids being half shut if it proceed neither from physick nor any loosness of the belly t is an evil signe and very mortal Aph. 52. Sect. 6. When the sick person sleeps with his eyes half shut so that you may perceive underneath a certain whiteness it shews a very great weakness of the animal faculty for if the eyes the closing of which is the easiest work of the faculty be shut in sleeping it sign fies a very great impoverishment of the animal spirits Therefore it is a deadly signe if such a resolution be produced by the strength of the disease but if it proceed from any evacuation either natural or procured by art or any outward cause by reason that that may be repaired again this half shutting of the eyes is not so dangerous Hipp. also adds another caution in 1. prog That is if the sick person were not wont to sleep in that manner for it is usual with some to sleep with their eyes half open This symptome is of great use in acute diseases of the head whether with or without a feaver because the eyes are next the brain and as it were joyned to them and so consequently most certainly declare the affections thereof but in other diseases they denounce not danger so surely For children that are troubled with the worms do frequently sleep with their eyes open and are easily recovered This affection proceeds not alwayes from an impairing of the strength but sometimes from a convulsion of the muscles moving the eyes as Galen teaches in his Comm. on this Aphorisme If in an acute disease one eye groweth less then the other t is mortal Hipp. 1. progn For it is caused by a weakness of the faculty governing the eye which now begins to desert its office but it would be much worse to see both the eyes extenuated by reason of the weakness of the same faculty But this extenuation begins to appear in one of the eyes for seldome it is that both eyes are in the same condition For so a consumption that is about to afflict the whole body uses to begin to take its rise from one or two members and thence to creep to the rest and thence to the rest as they are more or less prone to receive it Yet you must observe whether this extenuation proceed from any particular disease in the eye and not from a weakness of the faculty then it speaks no danger at all If in acute diseases the white of the eye appear red t is evil Hipp. 1. progn For it shews either blood or choler translated to the brain whence an inflammation and phrensie the product thereof is to be expected which threaten much danger to life For the tunicle that constitutes the white of the eye arising from the membranes of the brain the inflammation of them is easily communicated to the tunicle If in an acute disease the veines of the eyes appear black or blew it is a mortal signe 1. prog For either it signifies that adust and atrabilary humors abound in the brain or else an extinction of the natural heat which hath caused the blood to lose its native colour and to acquire concretion If the eyes are perverted in an acute disease it is evil 1. prog The eyes are said to be perverted when they move out of order and decorum that is either more upward then they ought or more downward or more to one side then the other as also if one move upward and the other downward or if one be drawn to one corner and the other
not and is without pain so is difficulty of breathing for should they continue obstinately and long they would rather portend an inflammation of the Liver CHAP. X. Of the signes of future Crisis by the moneths and hemorrhoids AFuture flux of the months and Hemorrhoids is known by the same signes yet here lyes the difference for if they appear in a woman wont to have monthly purgations the flux comes through the womb But if in a man accustomed to the Hemorrhoids then we may imagin that the Crisis will be by the Hemorrhoids But the signes common to either evacuation are these A pain and heaviness in the loyns and heat thereof A pain and distention in the hypogastrion A distemper at the mouth of the stomach When the blood descends to the lower parts filling and stretching vena cava it causes a pain heaviness and heat in them because the vena cava descending rests upon the loyns from which place very great branches thereof are carried to the hypogastrium which cause a pain and stretching in those parts Whence also proceeds a disturbance at the mouth of the stomach because of the great sympathy and agreement of the parts above the loyns and hypogastrium with the stomach CHAP. XI Of the signes of an ulcer THe following aphorismes do briefly declare when an ulcer will break out in any disease Such as are detained with long Feavers have long swellings and pains do arise in their joynts Aph. 44. Sect. 4. Those feavers are said to be long which last above forty dayes and are caused by a thick cold and contumacious matter and therefore because that matter cannot easily be evacuated by excretory cause nature often expels it to the weaker parts and there begets an ulcer Those who void crude and thin urine for a long time if other symptomes promise life an abscession is to be expected in the parts below the midrif Hipp. 2. prog It hath been said before that the signes of crudity remaining for a long time if the strength be impaired portend death because it is to be feared that the patient cannot hold out till the matter be concocted But if the strength of the body is in a good condition and other signes do promise a recovery it is to be hoped that the patient may be cured not by a perfect solution but by permutation or abscession When the urine stops with a coldness in such as are very sleepy it is a hopeful signe of ulcers near the ears Hipp. Coac For that sleepiness shews a great oppression of the brain at which time coldness coming on produces either an ulcer or a great convulsion Those who are sick of a Feaver having a weariness and faintness upon them may expect an ulcer in their joynts or about their jaws For a voluntary faintness in feavers proceeds from an abundance of thick and crude humors and those feavers are most difficultly judged and their judication is commonly by the breaking forth of an ulcer If on the patients recovery any part be distempered t is a signe that some ulcer will break out there Not onely the pain which afflicts any part at the declining of the disease but also all the symptomes that shew a weakness in the part are signes of an ulcer thereabout Note from Hipp. Aph. 74. Sect. 4. that while the signes of an approching ulcer appear if the urine be copious thick and white it takes away all fear of an abscession and that more certainly and speedily if there happen a bleeding together with this kind of urine CHAP. XII Of the signes of those things which will happen to one already sick or falling into a disease and first of the signes of approching madness MAny things usually fall out in diseases besides the Crisis as vehement symptomes the changing of one disease into another all which things if they can be foreseen by the Physician gain him a very honourable esteem and are of a special utility to the patient Therefore we shall endeavour to lay down their symptomes according to the foresaid method beginning from the signes of approching madness which are known by these rules Animal actions Principal Forgetfulness presently happening in acute diseases foretels a phrensie For it shews that the brain is affected and that the matter causing the discase is hurried up thither from the lower parts Less principal Sleep and waking Troubled and tumultuous sleeps foretel deliration This Hipp. taught in Coac in these words Turbulent and furious wakings out of sleep bring madness For they shew the brain to be very much affected and unsetled from its natural condition Continual watching brings madness Hipp. 2. prog For both of these affections are produced from the same cause viz. from a hot and dry distemper of the brain as Galen teaches in 4 of presage by pulse A more remiss distemper causeth watchfulness and a more intense one madness The hearing A thingling and sound in the ears or deafness often precedes madness especially if it appear with urine that hath matter lifted up and hanging in it Hipp. 1. prorrhet For these things do shew that the noxious matter is carried up to the brain which excites madness The sence of smelling too exquisite denounces madness For it shews an unwonted driness of the brain and an attenuation of the spirits which disposeth the brain to madness Feeling vehement and continual pain of the head in acute feavers portends madness especially when it is observed most in the ears or which is joyned with revulsions of the midrif for it signifies that the humors are copiously carried up to the brain and do vehemently distemper it Pain of the side which with cholerick spittle vanisheth away without any manifest cause is a signe of madness For it shews a translation of the cholerick humor from the side to the brain Pains in the leggs hasten madness and that as well at other times as especially if there is a bad enaeorema in the urine Hipp. in Coac There is so great a sympathy of the legs with the principal parts that as in a rupture of the heel there do happen peracute trembling sobbing feavers which last but little hot and mortal so in the pain of the legs which is caused by a malignant humor there is a feaver stirred up in the heart and madness in the brain the pestilent humors easily invading the brain Now although these pains not onely of the legs but also of the thighs back and other ignoble parts do portend madness yet they performe it more certainly if soon after appearance they withdraw again for they signifie a translation of the morbifick matter to the brain as you may see in Hipp. 3. Epid. Sect. 3. Aegr 5. where Calvus on a sudden had a pain in his right thigh and no remedies prevailed The first day he had a burning and acute feaver and the pain increased the third day the pain ceased and a madness with much tumbling and tossing ensued the fourth day about noon be dyed
of peel'd Oats boyled in water adding thereto a little Sugar and Almond milk which is lighter then Barly-water and therefore more easily concocted it moves urine because of the thinnesse of the substance as also by reason of its temper which inclines to heat Beans are us'd either dry and that by the vulgar sort and people of mean degree or green which is accounted among the more delicate dishes or boyl'd in pottage or fry'd in a pan However they are prepared they are of ill digestion and hardly distributed they increase thick and flatulent humours they swell up the belly and beget a difficulty of breathing and withall binde the belly they obstruct the Liver Spleen and Meseraick Veins they send many vapours to the head so that they hurt the eyes and cause turbulent dreams being of a cold and dry temper yet the green are moistest Although Beans are reckoned among the worst sorts of nourishment yet they afford excellent medicines which although it be not our intention here to reckon up where we only discourse of the matter of nourishment yet we shall here contrary to the method of our Theorems briefly touch upon them as being most usefull and which we have known by certain and daily experience And first there is a water drawn from the new shales of Beans most profitable for such as are troubled with the Stone for it cleanses the reins and hinders the generation of the stone if the patient drink thereof in a morning at several times two or three ounces thereof It is very profitable for such are troubled with a hot distemper of the veins because it is cold and moist when as all other nephretick medicines are extremely heating Of the dry'd shels of Beans and the stalks burnt are made a sort of Ashes which being boyl'd in water of Pellitory of the wall to a kinde of lye and taken for some mornings to the quantity of five or six ounces with an ounce of syrup of Maiden-hair like a julep cures efficaciously all contumacious and stubborn Gonorrhoea's The same is most excellent against the stone hanging in the ureters causing there very great pains for it removes it presently The same effect is performed by a salt drawn from the said ashes and given to the weight of a dram in water of Pellitory of the wall Outwardly also Bean-meal is applyed with very great successe in many affections especially in inflamations of the testicles which often proceed from an ill cured Gonorrhoea Most Chirurgeons who are oftner consulted by ignorant patients in venereal diseases then the Physicians observing an extraordinary hardnesse of the inflamed testicles presently apply mollifying Cataplasms which increase the inflamation when as that soft and spongy part by these dissolving Plaisters are made more fit to receive the flux of the matter Therefore those tumors are to be cured with astringent and discussing medicines to which purpose a Cataplasm made of Bean-meal boyl'd in Oxycratum extraordinarily conduces This plaister is to be often changed and renewed because it suddenly dries up by reason of the want of fat ingredients which are mingled in all other Cataplasms Though they are not here convenient because they inflame the part Yet there may be added to this Cataplasm that the sudden drying thereof may be hindred a little simple Oxymel which hath a faculty both to discusse and binde Pease are to be preferred before all other pulse being in the middle between things of good and bad juice things easie to digest and hard to concoct as Gal. testifies 1 de Alim facult cap. 21. and endued with no excessive quality and so coming near to a middle temper Yet cold and dry is a little predominant they are prepared divers waies both green and dry They are more easily concocted being shal'd and strained after they are boyl'd for the shales are of hard digestion evil juice and astringent The dry are preferred before the green being lesse windy and of easiest digestion but either of them as as all other Pulse are hurtful to melancholick persons and such as abound with thick humours and obstructions Chiches have a thicker substance then Pease and are of a harder concoction both within the without the body for they aske longer time of boyling ere they grow soft neither doth any water boyle them so tender as rain or the purest and thinnest fountain water Neverthelesse there is made of them an excellent Broth which hath a cleansing opening faculty and which provokes both urine and the flowers for which uses the blackest are most commended which are therefore called medicines amongst the vulgar Our Countrey women make a kinde of Broth to provoke the flowres of black Chiches roots of Petroseline and Saffron which they give for three daies together the evacuation being begun or near beginning Lentiles are the worst of all Pulses being of a cold and dry temper hard of digestion and begetting a melancholy juice they breed obstructions hurt the sight excite tumultuous dreams hurt the head nerves and lungs binde the belly stop the urine and the Courses which proceeds from their thick and binding substance CHAP. XIII Of Pot-herbs most in use and their faculties LEttice as Galen saith begets the best bloud of all Pot-herbs but little being cold and moist it provokes sleep increases milk loosens the belly cools the heat of the stomack represses the acrimony of all the humours it agrees best with cholerick sanguin and young people especially in the summer It is eaten raw in Salads as also boyled in broth it agrees best with those who have a weak stomack The often use thereof weakens the sight as Dioscorides saith Many relate that the juice of Lettice drunk to the weight of three or four ounces kils like other poysons Yet should so much Lettice be eaten as would yeeld the same quantity of juice it would do no hurt The reason of which is twofold the first is because that whole Lettice remains longer in the stomack so that the coldnesse is corrected by the long concoction thereof but the juice quickly pierceth to the vitals the second is because that Lettice is amended by the mixture of salt oyle and vinegar and sometimes sugar also Colewort as Galen saith 3. simpl cap. 15. hath a double substance juicy and earthy the one hot in the first degree and nitrous the second cold and dry The nitrous juice is sharp and abstersive and therefore moves the belly but the body of it is thick dry earthy astringent and for that cause bindes the belly The thinner part of the juice is drawn out by the first boyling of the Cabbage and therefore that first broth moves the belly the third and second doth not so Cabbage gives little nourishment and breeds not good humours like Lettice but rank and vitious The ill juice thereof is seen first by the decoction thereof which smels rank especially that which hath the heads cut off Besides Cabbage putrifying in gardens yeelds a most noisome smell Cabbage
the meat and closing up Cream of milk is like butter and agrees with it in vertues and qualities they differ in this that Butter is made by art and Cream swims up of its own accord Cowes milk abounds chiefly with it by reason it hath much fat it loosens the stomack swims above the meat and throwes down the nourishment afore it be concocted sends vapours to the head and begets a thick juice Beeing boyl'd it hath a substance like new Cheese and breeds thick juice the wheyie part being extracted by the fire it hurts the stomack lesse then new press'd cheese it is good against hot defluxions allayes thirst provokes sleep but it is hurtfull to a cold stomack and diseases of the nerves Being old and hardened it is of a hard digestion it breeds thirst nourishes little it bindes the belly and begets wind All Cheese hath not the same nature and temper but according to the variety of the creatures from which it is taken and according to the age smell taste and other circumstances thereof Cheese from Cows nourishes more but is hard of concoction Cheese of Ews milk hath a thicker substance but is more easily concocted it nourisheth lesse but affords a better nourishment then the former Cheese of Goats milk is worse and more hardly concocted by reason of its acrimony Old Cheese is hot because of the acrimony and sometimes putrefaction which it contracts through the mixture of salt or runnet when it is made and by how much the older it is by so much the sharper it is and by consequence hotter and dryer and as Avicen saith hot in the third degree Hence by reason of its heat and drinesse it is of hard digestion and apt to increase the stone especially if it be too much salted It is therefore to be avoided because as Avicen saith together with Galen and Dioscorides it is of a difficult concoction and distribution bindes the belly and turns into klack choler but taken in a little quantity after other meats it helps concoction though of it self it be of hard digestion While it is New and soft it is cold and moist more windy then hard and dry because of the moisture but lesse provoking thirst and lesse binding it nourishes well and breeds fat usefull to the stomack it is easily distributed into the members being not of such a hard and evil juice as old Cheese yet it is of hard digestion and causes the stone and other distempers That which stinks is worst of all but that which smels well is wholsomer Being sharp and salt it is hot and dry causes thirst and evil juice that which is sowre is of an evil juice and cold That which is sweet and fat is moderately hot nourishes more and is of a better juice Fat Cheese and full of butter is better that which is lean and without butter is far worse CHAP. XX. Of nourishment from Birds THE flesh of Hens in the active qualities is temperate in the passive moist of easie digestion of good juice and full of nourishment Avicen writes that it increases the wit and understanding that it clears the voice and increases seed all which things are to be understood of those which are of a middle age moderately fat for old Hens are condemn'd as being hard nervous lean and only fit for hatching The flesh of Capons and Cock-pullets is of the same nature and temper with the flesh of Hens that are young but with this difference that those pullets have a thinner substance and nourish lesse and therefore not fit for labouring bodies Young Pigeons are reckoned among the most laudable nourishments they are of an easie digestion they breed a juice neither thick nor thin but midling between both Turkeys do not give place to Capons nor Hens if they be young and kill'd two or three days before for if they be old and new kill'd they have a hard flesh and more difficult to digest The flesh of Geese is hot and moist hard of digestion and full of Excrements And the older they are so much the harder tougher and unfit for nourishment obstructive they are and full of evil juice but those which are of a middle age and well fatted are better and tenderer and in many places reckoned for dainties Goslins are unwholsome containing a slimy and excrementitious nourishment Of Birds Partridges are the chiefest without which the most sumptuous banquets lose their grace and splendour their flesh is very toothsome especially being young and hung up a little after they are kill'd they increase good bloud and that in great plenty and void of excrements they increase the memory and multiply seed exciting lust And Cardanus affirms that the long use of Partridge cures the Pox the whole masse of bloud and all the body being renewed by them Ring-doves Turtles Quailes Thrushes Blackbirds Larks and other mountain birds obtain the next place to Partridges they breed excellent juice nourish well and have very little excrement About the Quaile there is some controversie For Galen Pliny and Avicen relate that those who eat Quails often are subject to cramps the cause of which by Pliny is said to be because that Quailes do feed much upon black Hellebore Avicen addeth that they have an occult quality that causes the cramp Others deny this opinion the chief of which party is Averroes affirming that the flesh of Quailes is most wholsome and that it generates good bloud which is most consentaneous to reason for there are few countreys in which Hellebore is so plentifull those Birds feeding most upon the best herbs and corn Neither doth experience teach us that those who eat Quailes are troubled with the Epilepsie Add to this that by the benefit of God they were granted to the Israelites in the desert which would not have been but that they afforded singular good nourishment And although there did arise from thence heavie diseases among the israelites yet that proceeded from the abuse of that meat which they gourmandized so that they could not sufficiently concoct it whence came crudities and putrefaction But this is a general rule concerning the flesh both of Beasts and Birds that they differ much according to their age place of breeding and manner of dressing When as the flesh of those that are young and growing is much better then of those that are old and declining but as the flesh of those that are in the prime of their age obtains a midling nature so the flesh of those that are new born is mucous moist and full of excrement Rosted and fry'd in a frying pan it is dryer boyl'd it is moyster but those creatures that live in moist and moorish places have a more moist and excrementitious flesh and harder of digestion those that feed upon mountains have dryer flesh more easily concocted and void of excrement There are Egges which come from severall creatures but Hens Eggs are most in use they consist of a twofold substance of a different temper the
Again Evacuation hath a twofold end Revulsion and Derivation Though for other ends Evacuations are oft-times commended as shall afterwards appear yet because Revulsion and Derivation are most in use and have most difficulties therefore we shall explain them apart in the following Chapter together with particular Evacuation because of the great affinity between them CHAP. II. Of Revulsion Derivation and particular Evacuation REvulsion is an averting of the humour flowing into any part to the opposite and most distant parts having a regard to the original of the flux the community and good condition of the vessels Evacuation of the humour regards it either as it is in motion or in rest To the humour moving or flowing into any part revulsion and derivation is necessary to the humour resting evacuation Revulsion ought to be made in the remotest place from that part troubled with the flux as Galen teaches 13. Meth. c. 11. 2. Glaucon c. 2. and the nature of Revulsion it self shews as much for we endevour that that which is drawn back may not return which end is more easily attained if revulsion be made to the most opposite and remote parts Yet this is not simply and absolutely to be understood but with conditions supposed which shall be set down in the following Theorems The opposition or contrariety of the parts required in Revulsion hath three conditions The first condition is that revulsion be made to the original of the flux As often as the original of the flux is known Revulsion is alwaies to be opposed to it and the humours and to be drawn back to it again As for example if the Flux be from the liver to the womb the vein of the right arm is to be opened that the humour may be reduc'd to the source and original of the Flux The sentence of Galen seems to contradict this condition in his book of curing by Bloud-letting l. 6. where he would in an inflamation of the womb that the thigh should be let bloud To which we answer that the lower veins are to be cut in an inflamation of the womb not as to simple revulsion in which case it would be better to let bloud in the superior parts but for derivation also as well as revulsion By which answer other places of Galen are made plain where he teaches that the parts below the reins being affected that it is better to cut the lower veins that derivation and revulsion may be both made together when otherwise as to simple revulsion in those affections the upper veins only use to be opened The second condition is that the communion of the vessels be regarded If the original of the Flux be known it is enough to observe the first condition that the flux be drawn back to the part from whence it flowes But when that part is not known then the two latter conditions are to be observed which concern the part receiving that the communion of the vessels and the right habit of the parts be observed Those vessels are said to have a communion which have a relation to the part affected So in a flux of bloud from the nose the veins in the arm are open and not in the thigh though these are more distant from the part receiving because they have a lesser relation to the part So Galen in 13. Meth. in a flegment of the liver cuts the inner vein of the arm because it keeps correspondence with the liver by a large and broad way So also l. de tremor If saith he you cut the veins which have no agreement with the part affected you do that part no good and hurt the sound part by drawing from it that bloud which it may want The third condition is to observe the right direction of the vessels This condition is of most moment and chiefly to be observed in all revulsions for it is founded upon the neer consent and relation which the parts of the same side have one to another which is confirm'd by many experiments The right side of the womb is so much hotter then the left that thereby the right side formeth males the left females The cause of this increase of heat is the directnesse of the liver to that part for the vicinity and community of the vessels are not alike to both parts A Palsie possesses an exact half of the body the other unhurt and yet the humour fals down from the third and fourth ventricle of the brain in which there is no separation of the right from the left So the liver being inflamed if bloud break forth from the right nostril it cures it if from the left only it avails not there being but one vein which comes from the liver to each nostril If the left arm be open the spleen is evacuated and the left side which would not so fall out from the right arm Yet the left if you look at the communion of the veins draws not from the right but by the intervening of the the liver And lastly 6. Epid. Hip. saith that the permutations of diseases Crisis and Apostems are made directly and in a straight line But why the direction of the vessels should avail so much is hard to say though there are many opinions among which to let go the rest the most probable is that which hath been confirm'd by certain very grave Authors that there are many channels that run through the whole length of the body by which there is a free passage upwards and downwards of every thing contain'd in the body which notwithstanding are not distributed through the sides But those channels because they are not conspicuous to the sense are confirmed by two reasons besides the above mentioned experiments The first is taken from the end seeing that nature being solicitous for the conservation of individuals constitutes them as it were of two parts that so the one suffering any mischance the other may remain whole Thus when by any misfortune one eye ear or arm perishes by the other eye ear or arm life is preserved and so as it were two living creatures the right and left being joyned into one she hath made their life more lasting The second reason is taken from the event For an alteration is made suddenly from the right foot to the right arm or shoulder and contrary as also the right part of the head being affected and the humour descending the right part of the neck swels soonest so the humour staies there or if it descend to the breast the right fide is repleted sooner then the left or lastly if the humour descend to the inferiour parts it causes the gout in the right side sooner then in the left By the same reason the foot being afflicted in an Epilepsie some matter ascends to the head which could not be unlesse those channels were granted which as they are hidden in dead men so are they manifest in those that live and through those the humours are carried straight forward ascending
is cooled and the Feaver extinguished and that many by loosnesse and sweating have been clearly restored to health But this evacuation to swouning in our time is little in use and by the vulgar blemished by the name of rashnesse And therefore it is best to stop and to draw as much bloud as would bring the patient to swoun at two or three times without any fear of swouning and lesse hurt to the natural strength Causes also external and internal coindicate the quantity of bleeding The internal causes are the temperament habit and age A hot and moist temper endures more plentifull bleeding then a cold and dry An extenuated soft and slender habit of the body cannot endure a great evacuation of bloud but on the contrary a fleshy thick and firm A very fat habit of body very hardly sustains bleeding Though such a habit be not subject to dissolve yet because it hath narrow and slender vens which when they are emptied the fat easily straightens there is danger lest it extinguish the natural heat and therefore is prejudiced by bleeding A youthful age endures more bleeding then childehood or old age The external causes are the Countrey season posture of the heavens vacuation suppressed or else immoderate custome of diet manner of living or evacuating In a hot and dry Countrey men must bleed lesse Because such a Countrey consumes much of the natural heat bloud and spirits whence the strength is consumed and lesse quantity of bloud is left in the veins A cold and moist countrey endures more bleeding lesse that which is most cold but a temperate Countrey endures a larger then any A cold and moist temper of the air keeps in the humours and the natural heat and dissolves them not but in a very cold countrey the bloud being as it were congealed hardly gives way to evacuation then the internal parts if they remain destitute of their heat are in danger to be extinguished by the ambient cold As to the seasons of the year the Spring permits most bleeding next Autumn then Winter least of all Summer In the most hot and most cold posture of the heaven the bloud is to be sparingly let forth in a temperate more plentifully Any accustomed evacuation suppressed requires a larger emission of bloud A voluntary evacuation that takes not away the matter of the disease doth not exclude bleeding so the strength be not much impaired thereby but in respect of this the bloud is to be let out more sparingly and the evacuation to be suppressed if it will more impair the strength Spontaneous evacuation if it bring away the morbifick matter if it do ease the patient and is able to void as much as you require you must then leave it to nature if that be not able you shall vacuate so much bloud as that both evacuations joyned together may be able to do the work They that live frugally and sparingly either out of custome or by reason of some disease are more sparingly to be let bloud then those that live more intemperately Those that are accustomed to bleeding bear it with lesse danger then those who are not accustomed to it In such diseases as require bleeding there you must let bloud at the beginning The time of letting bloud is shewn by the presence of those Indicants that require such a remedy for in the beginning of a disease those Indicants do chiefly concur in respect of themselves and of the strength which then is more vigorous also because nature in the progresse of the disease being intent upon concoction and its contention with the disease is not to be called away from her work If the beginning of the disease be omitted or that then sufficient quantity of bloud hath not been taken away it is to be let forth at other times if the signs of fulnesse and crudity still appear and the strength can bear it and that other coindicants concur or at least hinder not Among those things which forbid bleeding at the beginning of a disease and at other times crudity of the stomack is not the least or the inconcoction of the meat in the first vessels This precept is propounded by Galen 9. Meth. c. 5. therefore unlesse the distemper of the bloud be very vehement bloud-letting is to be deferred till those humours be concocted lest being drawn to the liver they should beget obstructions and should do more harm then bloud-letting could do good In those diseases where there is either a certain remission or intermission Bloud-letting may be used either ie the remission or intermission In the fits and exasperations of Feavers there is the greatest conflict of nature with the disease at which time nothing is to be stir'd nor is the strength required for the conflict to be weakned by bleeding which is elegantly expressed by Celsus c. 10. l. 2. in these words If a vehement Feaver urge in the very vehemency thereof to let bloud is to kill the man When an affection urges vehemently a vein is to be opened at any hour but in those that intermit the fittest time to let bloud is the morning two or three hours after Sun-rising For then the meat eaten the day before is well concocted and the strength is more vigorous also in the morning the bloud is more full of power and is more thin and apt to flow CHAP. IV. Of Purgation PUrgation is an evacuation of the humours peccant in quality This definition is proposed by Galen Comm. in 2. Aph. sect 1. which that it may be rightly understood you must know that by vice of the quality is not meant a meer distemper for to that alteration only were sufficient but rather a Cacochymie or a redundancy of evil humours Of this sort are all excrementitious humours which being mixed with the bloud are contain'd in the veins or without them but those are of two sorts others natural others preternatural Natural are those which are generated according to nature as sweet flegm choler melancholy and the serous humour which if they are generated in due proportion and quantity need not any vacuation but if they abound in greater quantity are to be purged out but the excrementitious humours which are preternatural are those which are produced contrary to nature as yellow green eruginous glasteous and black choler as also sharp and salt flegm which humours when they ought by no means to be in the body the least quantity of them breeds a Cacochymia and indicates purgation if it cannot be removed by diet exercise and lighter labours But to every species of the peccant humour there ought to be corresponding a proper species of purging medicine And so for flegm medicines that purge flegm for choler medicines purging choler for melancholy things that purge melancholy for the serous humour things that purge aqueous and watry humours and for mixt humours mixt medicines are to be used Purgation is coindicated by the strength temperament habit age sex manner of living of the patient
of Lettice white Poppy the 4. great cold seeds Fleabane Barly Flowers of Roses Violets Water-lillies red Poppy Juices of Limmons Granates Vinegar sowre Grapes Opium Pears Camphire Compounds Waters of Purslain Lettice Plantain Roses red Poppy Water-lilly Syrups of Violets dry Roses Poppy Conserves of Roses Violets Water-lilly Lettice Cucumers Electuaries Triasantali cold Diamargarite Confections Philonium requies Nicolai Troches of Caphura Pills of Hounds-tongue Laudanum opiaticum Chymicks Sal prunellae Spirit of Sulphur and Vitriol Externals Oyls of Violets Water-lillies Roses Caphura of sowre Grapes Unguents of Roses Poplar refrigerans Galeni Santaline Cerecloth CHAP. XIX Of Ophthalmick Medicaments OPhthalmicks are properly those which by a peculiar property corroborate the eyes and sharpen the sight called Oxydorcicks There are some secondarily related to the eyes necessary for the various affections thereof as Medicaments that ease pain repell dry digest cleanse The eyes being endued with an exquisite sense are many times much tormented with pain so that they will require great art to ease them with anodyne Medicines Sometimes they are inflamed for which in the beginning repelling medicins are very good afterwards resolving ones lastly they are afflicted with tears ulcers and other affections for which drying and cleansing medicins are most convenient all these must be exquisitely chosen because of the delicate disposition and exquisite sense of the part Which are as follow Medicaments quickning the Sight Roots of Fennel Celandine Radish Leaves of Celandine Vervain Rue Eye-bright and Fennel Seeds of Fennel Radish great Clary Medicaments easing Pain Womans milk the white of an Egge stirred and turned to water Rose-water Muscilage of the seed of Fleabane Quinces Crums of grated Bread and boyled in milk with a little Saffron sweet Apples boyled the pulp of rotten Apples white Troches of Rhasis with Opium Repellers Water of Roses Plantain peculi rosarum Purslain Juice of Quinces sowre Apples white of an Egge Allum Dryers Ceruse washed Tutty washed Antimony washed oyntment of Tutty white Troches of Rhasis without Opium Digesters or Resolvers Sarcocol nourished with milk Saffron womans milk decoction of Fenugreek the bloud of young Doves forced out of the greater feathers into the Eye Cleansing without Acrimony Sugar-candie Syrup of dry Roses Tutty Pompholyx Leed burnt and washed Antimony washed Cleansers with Acrimony The galls of Fish are gentle of Beasts moderate and of Birds strongest among which the gall of a Partridge is strongest of all that of a Hen most gentlest the juice of Celandine and Fennel compound water of Hony CHAP. XX. Of Medicaments for the Breast MEdicaments for the Breast are those which are familiar to the Lungs and prepare the humours contained in them to be purged But that these humours may be the more easily expelled by Anacatharsis they ought not be too thick or too thin so that the thicker humours are prepared by cutting attenuating and cleansing Medicines which are hot the thinner by incrassating which are cold The matter of these is this Pectoral Medicaments hot and Simple Roots of Elecampane Florence orice both Birthworts Liquorice Ginger and Squils Leaves of Colts-foot white Horehound Hysop Thyme Savory Origan Calamint Cats-foot Ground-ivie Ros solis Tobacco which must be given in a little quantity because it procures vomiting Seeds of Nettles Hemp Colewort Massilian seceli or Hartwort Fruits fat Figs sweet Raisins Almonds Pine-nuts Lawrel-berries Flowers of Camomil Spices Saffron which is excellent Gums Turpentine Myrrhe Animals Hony Fox-lungs prepared Minerals flower of Sulphur Compounds Waters of Hysop Colts-foot Syrups of Colts-foot Hysop Liquorice Venus-bair simple Oxymel Oxymel of Squill Sugar candied Conserves of Venus-hair Elecampane-roots Ginger Electuaries Diaireos simple Diaireos of Salomon External Oyls of Orrice sweet Almonds Camomil Lillies Fat 's Hens grease Ducks Calves grease Butter Marrowes of Harts and Calves Unguents of Althea Marshmallowes resumptive Emplaisters of Sulphur Bay-berries Filii Zachariae or of the son of Zachary Pectorals cold and Simple Roots of Marsh-mallowes and Liquorice Leaves of Venus hair Lungwort Seeds the 4. greater cold ones Mallowes white Poppy Fleabane Bombax harly Fruits Jujubes Sebestens sweet Almonds sweet Prunes Flowers of Violets Water-lillies red Poppy Gums Arabick Tragacanth Juices Amylum or juice of Wheat juice of Liquorice Animals Womans Asses Goats milk flesh of Lobster and river Crabs Compounds Waters of Lettice Purslain Water-lillies red Poppy Barly Syrups of Jujubes Violets Venus-hair white Poppy which is narcotick Sugars of Roses Penids Conserves of Roses Violets Borrage Lettice inside of Gourds candied Electuaries Diatragacanth cold Diamargarite cold Diapenidion without species Externals Oyl of Violets Water-lillies sweet Almonds Greases of Hens Ducks Calves new Butter These Greases are temperate and therefore used both in hot and cold affections CHAP. XXI Of Cardiacal Medicaments THose Medicaments are called Cardiacals which by a specifical property corroborate the heart refresh the vital spirits and resist poyson and malignant affections and because the heart is weakned sometimes by a hot and sometimes by a cold distemper therefore these Cordials some ought to be hot some cold Hot Cordials Simple Roots of Dittany Cink-foil Vipers-grasse Setwal Gentian Masterwort Doringum Barks Cinamon dry rinde of Citron Wood Xyloaloes Leaves of Baulm Scabious Carduus benedictus Basil Pollep Southernwood Rosemarie Lavender Seeds of Carduus benedictus Basil Citron Fruits Dyers grains Juniper-berries Nutmegs Cloves Flowers of Rosemarine Borrage Buglosse Mace Saffron Spikenard Gums Frankincense Myrrhe Mastick Juices of Balm Scabious Borrage Animals Musk Civet Bezoar-stone raw Silk Minerals Amber Succinum Compounds Waters of Orange flowers Balm Rosemary Carduus benedictus Scabious Aqua vitae Imperial Treacle Celestis Cinamon Oyls Chymical of Cinamon Cloves Nutmegs Syrups of the conditure of Citron peel Byzantine Conserves of the flowers of Citron peel candied Nutmegs candied Mirobalans candied Confections Alkermes Treacle Electuaries Aromaticum Rosatum Diambra de Gemmis Letificans Galeni Diamoschum Dulce Cold Cordials Simples Roots of Sorrel Buglosse Bisfort Tormentil Woods all the Sanders Leaves of Borage Buglosse Sorrell sharp pointed Dock Seeds of Quinces Plantain Sorrel Flowers of Roses Violets Borage Buglosse Water-lilly Fruits Citrons Limons sowre Cherries Ribes sowre Granates sweet Apples Quinces Gums Camphire Animals Pearl Unicorns horn the bone in the heart of a Stag Ivory Spodium Harts-horn Bezoar-stone Minerals Terra sigillata bole Armoniack precious fragments Gold Coral Compounds Water of Roses Borage Buglosse Sorrel Syrups of Granats Limons Violets of the juice of Sorrel of dry'd Roses of fragrant Apples Conserves of the flowers of Borage Buglosse Roses Violets and leaves of Sorrel Confection of Hyacinth Electuaria cold Diamargarite Diatriasantalum CHAP. XXII Of Hepatical Medicaments HEpatical Medicaments are destined to comfort the Liver and to correct the distempers thereof some of them being heating others cooling But because all sorts of humours are bred there and the veins thereof are very narrow it is very subject to obstructions And therefore all Medicaments convenient for the Liver are of an opening quality Hot