master them and because by them many obstructions are caused by which Transpiration is prohibited and at length putrefaction engendred And finaly passions of the Mind are wont vehemently to exagitate the body and to disturb the humors and so they much Dispose the body to receive infection and especially fear and Sadnes which Drawing the vital Spirits inward do as it were choak and smother them whereby the vigor of the Heart is so broken that it cannot sufficienly resist the venom and first assaults of pestilential Sicknesses yea verily and the Humors being stirred in the veines and vehemently disturbed are thrust out of their Natural constitution and do conceive a malignant putrefaction Insomuch that some have conceived that Pestilential Diseases are bred in Camps and at Sieges of Towns not so much through bad Diet and stink of dead Carcases as through Terror Fear Anxiety and dread of Death which do exagitate the Humors and put them into a tumultuary Combustion and Fluctuation The Signs of a pestilential Feaver do some of them foretel the disease when it is coming others declare it to be present and others witnes where it has bin All which must be set down because the first tend to Preservation the second to Cure and the third sort to be a Caveat to such as are not yet infected The Signs which foreshow a pestilential Feaver are taken from three things viz. From the the Disposition of the Body from the Presence of Causes and from some intermediate dispositions Those bodies are disposed to receive pestilential Infection which have collected evil Juyces through bad diet and by a preposterous use of the six non-natural things aforesaid Or such as being plethorick do gorge themselves and inordinately and unseasonably replenish themselves Furthermore some that are neither plethorick nor cacochymical do dispose their bodies to the reception of this disease while they torment their minds with most troublesome passions or give themselves immoderately to carnal embracements for from these two Causes the pestilential feaver is very ordinarily produced forasmuch as by them corruption is easily introduced even amâ—ngst good humors for Passions of the Mind do distract and draw away the spirits from their proper operations and overmuch Carnal embracement does weaken al the powers of the body but the Spirits being distracted and the vertues weakened the Humorrs change their Nature and grow corrupt Finally those whose principal Members are weak or some waies tainted either from the womb or by bad diet or any other external Cause which have an hot and moist temperature which have a very thin or very compacted habit of body are al disposed to pestilential Feavers for hot and moist bodies are subject to putrefaction thin bodies are liable to al 〈◊〉 compacted constitutions have no free transpiration The presence of such Causes as can breed a pestilential feaver do portend the same and consequently il seasons and unnatural temper of the year Dearth and Scarcity of Victuals Wars and other Causes reckoned up before when they appear they declare the Plague to â—â— approaching Those intermediate dispositions are when such a disposition oâ— body and the Causes aforesaid being present wee see a Man more â—ad than ordinary an unexplicable fear in him without good ground or cause the Colour of the face changed is not rightly disposed in point of die is disturbed with bad dreames infested with wearines which comes without labor thirst watchings stomachsickneâ— it is easily conjectured that man wil have the Pesttilence for al there thing do declare that the humors do attain another nature and do corrupt from whence comes a pestilential Feaver Such Signs as declare the Pestilence to be present are exactly to be propounded and therefore al the Heads of Signs must be run over out of which this Disease may be known which Heads of signs are taken from the three kinds of symptomes because the symptomes are the Effects of Diseases and Causes can no way so conveniently be known as by their effects And therefore some signes are taken from the Actions hurt some from Excrements voided and others from qualites changed Unto which Heads a fourth must be added taken from supervenient Infirmites To the right understanding of which these things following must be premised Frist we must know that the same signs in a manner doe shew a pestilental Feaver properly so called and a Feaver simply malignant and that the signes of the one and the other doe differ only according to more and leâ—s so that in the pestilential Feaver the symptoms are more and in the malignant Feaver less cruel yet there are some adjuncts more proper to the one than the other which we shall declare in their proper place Secondly we must note that there is no true proper and Pathognomonick sign of these Feavers viz. Such an one as wherever that signe is there is the pestilence and where that sign is not there is no pestilence no not the Bubo or swelling in the Groyn nor the Carbuncle seeing that many have them not though they have the plague and many have Buboes and Carbuncles that have no malignitie in them neither are those purple spots any such pathognomonick sign although a malignant Feaver is from them termed the spotted Feaver forasmuch as many have a malignant Feaver without any such spots those spots doe sometimes appear on women that want their courses and in some Children by reason of a light ebullition of â—lood without any Feaver which I have often seen in both Howbeit by a Concurrency and collection of all signes and tokens these Feavers may certainly be known Thirdly we must mark that al the signs which shall be propounded are not found in al sick persons of these Feavers but only a part of them which notwithstanding will be sufficient punctually to discover the kind of the disease For according to the variety of patients bodies the intention or remisnes of the disease now these kind of symptomes anon those do chiefly shew themselves Finally it must be known that the signs of a pestilential and malignant Feaver although they are also found in other Feavers yet are made in some sort pathognomonick in this Feaver in a two-fold respect First because in these Feavers they are so conditioned as in other Feavers they are not For the Head-ach Ilness at Stomach Vomiting the manner of the Heat and other signs when they accompanie pestilential Feavers they have a peculiar malignant condition whereby they differ from themselves when they accompanie other ordinarie Feavers which is wel known to them that are but indifferently exercised in the Practice of Physick Secondly because the symptomes do not observe the same proportion among themselves in these Feavers which they doe in ordinarie ones So that the heat being gentle to the touch the pulse not much changed doe shew a smal Feaver yet with them is joyned mighty Head-ach watchings and somtimes raveings and other symptoms which are wont to accompanie a
which by a peculiar property diminish and cool the Seed Among which take these that follow for example Take Leaves of Water-lilly Willow Agnus Castus of each four handfuls Lettice Purslain Penny-wort or Two-penny Grass of each a handful the four larger cooling Seeds Lettice and white Poppy seeds of each half an ounce Dill seeds two drams the flowers of Water-lilly and Violets of each one handful Let all be stamped being fresh and let them be sprinkled with Juyce of Lemmons and distilled in Balneo Mariae and to every pint of the Water add a dram of Camphire Let the Patient take an ounce divers times Or of all or some of the Simples aforesaid a Decoction may be made and sweetened with Sugar and a little Camphire put to it to be taken divers times one after another Or an Emulsion may be made of the greater cool Seeds Lettice seeds and white Poppy seeds extracted with the Waters of Lettice Willow and Water-lillies and sweetened with Syrup of Violets An Electuary may be prescribed after this manner Take Conserve of the Flowers of Water-lillies Violets and Agnus Castus of each half an ounce Conserve of Roses half an ounce Lettice Stalks preserved one ounce Coral and Smaragd prepared of each one dram with Syrup of Violets and water-lillies make an Opiate In the greatest extremity of the Patients raving such things as procure sleep are very profitable both inward and outward Medicaments as they are set down in the Cure of Phrenzy and Madness In the whol course of the Disease Clysters which cool and gently purge are to be used taking heed of sharp Clysters and such as vehemently purge which do exagitate the Humor contained in the Womb or its Vessels whereby the Symptomes are wont to become more fiery Also Injections may be made into the Womb of the Decoction of such Herbs as have formerly been set down for Baths and other Remedies whereunto Sal Saturni may profitably be added Frequent Clysters may likewise be good to the same intent being made of Vinegar allaied with Water Also cooling Oyntments are to be applied to the Loyns Privity the Share and between the Water-gate and the Dung-gate made of Oyl of Water-lillies Oyntment of Roses Vnguentum Album Camphoratum with the Juyces of Nightshade Henbane and Water-lillies melted together adding a little Camphire Also a Plate of Lead is good to be worn continually upon the Reins In regard of the immediate Cause seeing the evacuation of the sharp and corrupted Seed may cure the Disease it is very good Advice in the Beginning of the Disease before the Patient begins manifestly to rave or in the space between her fits when she is pretty well to marry her to a lusty yong man For so the Womb being satisfied and the offensive Matter contained in its Vessels being emptied the Patient may peradventure be cured But if the Patient cannot so conveniently be married or the condition of her life will not bear that estate some advise that the Genital Parts should be by a cunning Midwise so handled and rubbed as to cause an Evacuation of the over-abounding Sperm But that being a thing not so allowable it may fuffice whilst the Patient is in the Bath to rub gently her Belly on the Region of the Womb not coming neer the Privy parts that the luke-warm temper of the Water may moderate the hotness of the Womb and that it may by the moisture be so relaxed as of its own accord to expel the Seminal Excrement and that nothing else be done with the hand save a little to open the Womb so as the Water may pass into its more inward parts forasmuch as the water will operate as much as any of those Medicines which are used to extinguish the seed withal Pessaries may be compounded to the same intent of the Leaves of Mercury bruised with a little Mirrh or the Pouder of Aristolochia or Birthwort which must be put up when the Patient is in the Bath lest otherwise the VVomb should be over-heated and after an hour it must be taken away And afterward let an Injection be made into the VVomb of VVhey or Barley water with a little Juyce of Nightshade Housleek or Hemlock which is specially commended in this Disease To purge out the Seed the following Bolus or Morsel will be very profitable Take of Venice Turpentine three drams Agaricktrochiscated one dram Carrot seed Hemp-seed and Lignum Aloes poudered of each eight grains With Sugar make all into a Bolus or Morsel to be swallowed If the Disease do yet continue let Issues be made in her Thighs for nothing is better than by such meanes to draw the matter downward from the Womb to those inferior parts And if swellings of the Spleen shall arise and Obstructions during this Cure as it often times happens they must be carefully cured with their proper Medicaments Finally Because in this Disease the Brain and Heart are grievously affected by reason of Vaporsarising from the Womb they are both of them diligently to be provided for the Brain being secured by rubbing and chafing the lower parts and by Cupping-glasses frequently fastened upon the Hipps and Groins and the heart defended by Cordial things out wardly applied both Liquid and Solid such as are described in our Chapter touching decay of strength Chap. 6. Of the Mother-Fits or Womb-sickness WHen Seed and Menstrual Blood are retained in Women besides the intent of Nature they putrefie and are corrupted and attain a malignant and venemous quality from whence venemous Vapors are elevated and carried to divers parts of the Body from whence divers Symptomes do arise and those so divers that Democriâ—us might justly say in his Letter to Hippocrates That the VVomb is Author of a thousand sad Sorrows and innumerable Calamities And Hippocrates himself saies in his Book of Virgins Diseases That miserable VVoman-kind is commonly laded with incomprehensible and manifold Diseases All which Infirmities we intend to explain in this Chapter under the name of Mother-Fits herein imitating Galen who in his sixt Book of Parts Affected and the fift Chapter saies that the Mother or Hysterical Passion is but one name indeed yet comprehending under it divers and innumerable Accidents Notwithstanding all late Writers in a manner do handle â—he Suffocation of the Womb under the Title of Hysterical Passion calling a particular Symptome by such a name as is common to many others because it of al the rest is most frequent and most troublesom But herein the very best Authors seem to have been superfluous in their Treatises of Womens Diseases while in different Chapters they describe several Diseases springing from the Womb viz. Suffocation of the Womb Head-ach Epileptical fits Palpitations of the Heart Pulsation of the Arteries about the short Ribs and in the Back the Diseases of the Stomach Liver and Spleen arising from the Womb and divers pains in sundry parts of the Body arising therefrom seeing all these Infirmities do arise from one and the same
Augmentation but a long state The Epacmastick hath a long augment the paracmastick a long declination but the other times do quickly pass away Yet we must know that the times of Putrid Feavers are two waies considered either with respect to the Symptomes or with respect of coction and crudity which two in other Feavers do commonly comcide or happen at one and the same time But in these continent Feavers called Sunochoi it is not so For their times ought not so much to be defined by the increase and decrease of the Symptomes as by the signs of Concoction or non Concoctions which appear cheifly in the Urines Now Galen propounds two sorts of this continent Feaver called Synochus one springing from Blood putrefying of which he treates in the second of this Method Chap. 7. and 9. as also in the 9. of his Method Chap. 3. and 5. another arising of choller putrefying in the greater vessells of the kind of burning Feavers which he explaines in his second of the Differences of Feavers and the second of Crises Chap. 6. The first is called Synochus Sanguinea and the other Synochus Biliosa For allthough the whol Maâ—s of Humors conteined in the Veins do go under the name of Blood yet do we acknowledg four Parts thereof of which the more temperate is specialy called Blood the hotter Part Choller the rawer and colder flegm and the thicker and more dreggy Melancholy So then if that more temperate Part which is more especially called Blood do surmount the rest in quantity and the whol Mass putrefy that Feaver is caused which we term Synochus Sanguinea But if the thinner and hotter Part of the Blood which is of thâ— nature of Yellow Choller do exceed the rest and putrefy that Feaver is caused which we term Synochus Biliosa Synochus Putrida is ingendred by the same causes which are wont to produce the simple Synochus And so not only the shutting the pores of the Skin but the obstruction of the vessells also by reason of much Blood and thick and claâ—my Humors is wont to cause this Feaver For seeing by such like obstructions the Transpiration of Fuliginous Vapours is hindered putrefaction is bred in the â—lood redounding within the Veins A continual tertian which every third day doth more afflict the Patient than ordinary takes its Rise from bad and Chollerick Blood putrefying in the Vena Cava And the Causes thereof are all such things as multiply this Humor in the Body as an hot and dry distemper of the Liver Meats hot and dry Youthfull Age fasting or very spare Diet vehement and frequent exercise hot and dry constitution of the Air over great watchings and such like A continual Quotidian which the Barbarous writers term Latica or lurking because it hath a certain hidden and concealed heat is produced by flegmatick Blood putrefying within the Veins therefore it hath its exacerbations or fits every day It is wont to assail flegmatick bodies as of Infants and Children and old men as also of such as are of a fat and corpulent constitution given to idleness and cramming of bellvchear and inhabiting moist places This kind of Feaver happens but seldom because flegm is hardly putrefied A continual Quartan is that which is exasperated every fourth day being Caused of Melancholly Blood putrefying in the branches of Vena Cava And all things may Cause this Feaver which are apt to breed Melancholly Blood and to Cause the same to putrefy Howbeit this kind of Feaver is most rarely observed The accidental differences of Feavers are taken from their evil Symptomes which are wont to be complicated with the Essentiall and from them they are named Among these are wont to be reckoned Febris Ardens that is the Burning Feaver Colliquans the â—elter or dissolving Feaver the shivering Feaver Horrisica Assodes the tumbling tossing and vomiting Feaver â—lodes the sweating Feaver Syncopalis the swouning Feaver Epiala the Feaver which makes the Patient hot and cold at one and the same time Causus or Febris Ardens the burning Feaver is properly that which is perpetually accompanied with these two symptomes viz. an ardent burning heat and an unquenchable thirst though the Patient drink never so much Galen 3. Epidem Com. 3. text 34. It is divided by the same Galen in Com. 4. de Vict Rat in acutis text 13. into a Ligitimate or bastard burning Feaver The Legitimate or exquisite burning Feaver is that which hath the two symptomes aforesaid allwaies and evidently conjoyned therewith The bastard in which those symptomes are less vehement the thirst less Urgent and the body not so burning The Lightimate is Caused by a Chollerick Humor putrefying within the large Vessels near the heart the bastard is caused by Choller mingled with Flegm or Salt Flegm putrefying in the Vessels aforesaid Whence it appeares that a Ligitimate burning Feaver is no other but a continual Tertian Feaver whose Matter is more sharp and plentiful than ordinary and conteined in the larger Vessels which are neer the Heart whereas the Matter causing a simple continual Tertian is in Vessels Remoter from the Heart Again there are two sorts of an exquisite burning Feaver the one from the beginning to the end hath one only accession or fit which we before named Synochus Biliosa and it is likewise called Synochus Ardens which is caused when the Humor putrefying doth occupy al the Vessels which are most neert the Heart the other is named Ardens Periodica and conteines in it self divers fits or accessions it is caused by the same Choller conteined in the Vessels neer the Heart but not in al or not so neer as in Synochus Ardens So that a Continual Tertian Synochus Ardens and Ardens Periodica do differ one from another only as the Choller causing them is more or less sharp plentiful and neer the Heart Febris Colliquans the Melting Feaver is of the kind of burning Feavers which in regard of the exceeding heat doâ—h suddainly melt the Fat Flesh and substance of the solid Parts and somtimes the Blood conteined in the Veins and dissolve the same by insensible Transpiration Sweats Urines or Stools It is wont to be caused by a thin sharp and Chollerick Matter which is vehemently inflamed and Galen teaches that often times there is adjoyned thereunto a malignant and pestilential Quality Comment in 3. Epid. Sect. 3. Sent. 57. Horrifica Febris in Greek Phricodes is that Feaver in which the Patient doth often undergo shaking fits it is caused by a mingled Matter viz. Partly Chollerick and Partly Flegmatick oâ— wheyish which being unequally moved is wont to excite those Horrors or Shakings either because the thin sharp and wheyish Matter doth twitch and nip as it were the sensible and menbranous Parts or the inflamed Choller doth putrefy and put in motion the crude Humors or because Nature doth in Vain seek to shake of the crude undigested Humor whereupon the Heat being driven Back to the Centre the Extream Parts of the Body are cold and afterwards
men Riolanus Anatomy Bartholinus Anatomy All the Works of Daniel Sennertus except some few not proper for Translation The Idea of Practical Physick being a compleat Body of Physick And Fernelius his Works These Books of Divinity will speedily be printed Mr. Burroughs on 1 Cor. 5. 7. and 18 19. 29. And fifty nine Sermons on Matthew 11. 28 29 30. Seventeen Books of Mr. Thomas Hooker being the substance of many Sermons preached in New-England Several pieces of Mr. Bridge of Yarmouth Viz. 1 Scripture Light the most sure Light compaâ—ed with 1. Revelations and Visions 2. Natural and supernatural Dreams 3. Impressions with and without Word 4. Light and Law within 5. Divine Providence 6. Christian Experience 7. Humane Reason 8. Judicial Astrology Delivered in three Sermons on 2 Pet. 1. 19. 2 Christ in Travel Wherein The 1. Travel of his soul 2. The first and after effects of his Death 3. His Assurance of Issue 4. And His satisfaction therein Are opened and cleered in three Sermons on Esay 53. 11. 3 A Lifting up for the Cast-down in case of 1. Great sin 2. Weakness of Grace 3. Miscarriage of Duties 4. Want of Assurance 5. Affliction 6. Temptation 7. Dissertion 8. Unserviceableness 9. Discouragements from the Condition it self Delivered in thirteen Sermons on Psalm 42. 11. His Four Sermons concerning 1 Sin against the Holy-Ghost 2 Sins of Infirmities 3 The fifth Monarchy 4 The Good and means of Establishment Francisci Tayleri Capitula Patrum Hebricè Latinè edita Una cum Annotationibus sensum locorum difficilium Experimentibus Francisci Tayleri Lamentationes Jeremiae vatis Denuo è fontibus Hebraicis translatae cum Paraphrasi Chaldaica Masora magna parva Commentariis Rabbi Shelomoh Jarchi Aben Ezrae è Buxtorfii Bibliis magnis excerptis The Author to the Reader FIfteen Yeers ago Friendly Reader to Satisfie the Desires of my Auditors I undertook to explain unto them the Methodicall Cure of all inward Diseases of the Body which that I might accomplish the sooner I medled not at all in a manner with the Theory knowing ful well that any Student might with ease enough fetch the same from divers Authors which notwithstanding they could not so easily do in point of Practice because of the almost infinite Company variety of Medicaments wherewith the Books of those that have delivered the Practical part of Physick do swarm with which Young Beginners are so confounded that they remain amazed not knowing which to choose I conceived it would be most profitable for them if out of such a multitude of Medicaments I should select the most choice and which were most frequently used and dispose them into the same order which we are wont to observe in our Practice when we attend the Cure of our sick Patients This Method of teaching gave such content to our Students of Physick that as many as came flocking to this University to study after that I had finished the same did all earnestly desire to have written Coppies thereof and many of them did frequently exhort me and earnestly Beg that I would suffer it to be printed and so for the future free all Men from the tedious Labor of writing it out But I who never had the thought being very free from Self-Love that my writings were of so much worth as to be published in Print especially this Method of Practice which was slipt from me as a thing only begun with rude Notes hastily huddled up to perform my daily task of Reading and half maimed for want of the Theoretick part I thought it better to beleeve my own Conscience than their too favourable Opinion I pondered likewise in my Mind that it was a very hazardous thing to subject my Reputation to the Judgment of the whol world and as it commonly falls out to the biting Teeth of envious detractors especially in this polished Age abounding with neat and pasing fine Witts who are hardly pleased with such workes as have been wrought with the greatest Industry possible and who are wont to peep curiously to spy spots in the shining Sun Nevertheless this unperfect Birth of mine which I desired to keep close and hidden was sent into the wide world by one of my Schollers who without my knowledg and against my will gave that imperfect homely and unpolished work to a Printer of Paris to print And this Child of mine which I did count Abortive was more pleasing and found greater Favour in the Eyes of Strangers than in its Fathers for all the Books of this first Edition were suddainly sold off A second Edition and a little after a Third was procured by the same Printer by which all Europe was filled with Copies Nevertheless some yeers after there came out three other Editions within two yeers time one at Lions and two other in Holland viz. at Tergow and the Hague In the mean while I received very many Letters out of the Chief Cities of FRANCE GERMANY HOLLAND and ITALY from Doctors of Physick whom I was acquainted with when they studied Physick in this University seriously expostulating that this Work was Lame because it wanted the Theory of the Disease and withall advising me that it would be worth my pains to spend some part of my studies that way Conceiving at length that it was fitting to consent unto their just requests I laboured with all my might as far as my Employments and Health would give me leave to finish and publish this Theoretick part insomuch that at last Blessed and Praised be God I brought the same to a conclusion Accept it freindly Reader with a cheerfull mind being Joyned to the foresaid Practick part so that in one continued Discourse thou maiest Behold the Nature Differences Causes Diagnostick and Prognostick Signs together with the Cure ofall Diseases I Suppose this Child of mine will merit highly thy Favour being now adorned in all its parts and advanced to a far greater Degree of Perfection and seeing that thou wert pleased with it in its Cradle and Swadling-Clouts now that it is greater and hath attained its perfect Stature of Body it will not I hope Displease thee Enjoy it with Gods Blessing and whatever thou shalt learn therefrom let Christian Charity cause the to employ it for thee Good of thy Neighbour Also I desire thee to take notice that many faults were crept into the former Editions through the negligence of Printers all which I have carefully corrected in this Edition And furthermore I have added many and those very Choice Medicaments to the Cures formerly printed which will not a little conduce to the happy cure of difficult Diseases Forewel From my Study at Monpelier the first of July Lazarus Riverius An EPIGRAM shewing who are Doctors of Physick and who not Doctors or Teachers they of Physick are Whether by Pen they do it or in Chair With lively Voyce that teach the way to know Mans Nature Health and Sickness and do show Diseases Cause and Cure But
of Palpitation of trembling and shaking chap. 8. and his third Book of Parts affected chap. 6. and his second Book of the Causes of Symptomes chap. 2. and his Comment upon Aphor. 39. Sect. 6. For saith he while the strings are moist and filled with humor as it falls out when the wind is Southernly they are stretched and so broken and when they are over dry as it happens in Northern weather they are contracted and also broken So the Reins of a Bridle drying too neer the fire are contracted when they were before extended with too much moisture the same befals the Nerves which being either too full of moisture or too dry are stretched and contracted and the Muscles into which they are united are so drawn back to their principal or original from whence all the Body hath a Convulsion The Mediate Causes of a Convulsion which make Repletion and Emptiness are divers And first the Causes of Repletion are recited by Galen in his Book of Trembling chap. last to the increase of flegm and inflamation a waterish Humor flowing to the Nerves is supposed to stretch them in their breadth which must needs make them shorter But here is a very great difficulty which is propounded by divers Authors but is resolved perfectly and plainly by none namely what difference there is between the cause of a Palsey and of a Convulsion when both come from a water flowing upon the Nerves why that matter which makes a Palsey which so fills the Nerves that it stops all their passages or pores whereby the Animal Spirits are hindred in their motion doth not also stretch the Nerves in breadth and cause also a Convulsion and why the matter causing a Convulsion filling the Nerves doth not also stop the passages and cause a Palsey when contrarily in a Convulsion the feeling remaineth and the part affected for the most part is very much pained For the resolving of this doubt Authors are much divided and the most ingenious of them all confess that is beyond their capacity Most witty Averroes considering of this Point breaks forth in this expression I would I knew the reason saith he why the Nerves are extended in their breadth and not in their length And presently after he saith Know ye that the words of all Physitians that write of this Symptome are more proper to Fidlers and Singers than to Demonstrators or such as should make things plain And Ingenuous Argenterius in his Comment upon the 26. Aphor. Sect. 2. speaks thus It is not easie to render a reason of all things and especially why Water which is said to be the cause of the Palsey or resolution of Nerves and of the Convulsion should somtimes bring one and somtimes another when it is the same matter and the same parts are affected namely the Nerves why should not the same Disease be alwaies produced Thus Argenterius The great difficulty of this matter hath distracted all Writers into divers Opinions so that some have left the Doctrine of Hippocrates and Galen among whom are Averroes Erastus Platerus Cesalpinus Sennertus and others whose divers Opinions and long Disputations we cannot attend to repeat for we desire to be very short and lay aside all Controversies only adhaering to those things which are most necessary for Cure The Opinion of the soundest Writers which are unwilling to dissent from Galen comes to this That a Convulsion is caused of a thick matter which extendeth the Nerves in their breadth and contracteth them in their length and that a Palsey comes of a thin humor which runs through the substance of the nerve and softeneth it but doth not open the pores and passages But this doth not satisfie a soul that is greedy of Truth For if a thick humor by filling the Nerve doth stretch it broader why doth it not also fill its pores and stop the insensible passages and hinder the coming in of the Animal Spirit and so bring a Palsey and why doth not a Convulsion follow a Palsey in process of time when a thin humor long sticking upon a part must needs grow thick even as the serous matter which makes the Arthritis or Joynt-gout by long continuance upon the part causeth the matter which makes the stone Others say that in a Convulsion only the external part of the Nerve which is Membranous and tender is possessed with the humor but in a Palsey the Internal but this giveth less satisfaction For when the Nerves are for the most part slender it is not easie to conceive how the humor should only possess the external part and not the internal or the internal and not the external Or leastwise if this could be so a Convulsion would follow a Palsey and a Palsey a Convulsion by the increase of the matter and that which at first did only possess the outward or the inward part in process of time would seize upon the whol Nerve Therefore we although we cannot satisfie ourselves in this great Difficulty while better Arguments are propounded suppose that those Objections may be taken off thus A Convulsion and a Palsey differ in this A Palsey is made of a pure watery humor without mixture which doth not extend the parts but softeneth them as we may see in the tumor called oedema but a Convulsion is caused of the same humor but not pure and simple but mixed with much wind by which wind the Nerves are stretched and the Muscles also which are contracted to their Original For no cause can be thought upon more fit to make so great a contraction than wind which Galen acknowledgeth in his second Book de sympt caus chap. 2. and Experience teacheth us that the greatest distentions are made especially by wind as we may see in the dropsie called Tympanites and the Chollick And in Convulâ—ions those are the greatest which are caused of wind which stretcheth and distendeth the parts By this Argument all the aforesaid Objections are answered For if it be demanded Why that flegm or water which maketh a Convulsion doth not bring a Palsey by hindering the passage of the Spirits we may answer That it is in so smal a quantity that it cannot stop the insensible passages of the Nerves and that it is so extenuated and made thin by much wind that it cannot produce a stoppage or obstruction Or we may say that wind is the chief cause of Convulsions which Galen acknowledgeth in the place mentioned And in his 6. Book de loc affect cap. ult he makes the only cause of a Priapism which is the Convulsion of the Yard to be wind The other Cause of a Convulsion coming from Repletion which Galen mentions in the place ciâ—ed is the Inflamation of the Nervous parts especially in the Original of the Nerves or neer to its original by which they are stretched and that Inflamation is either from a cause only internal namely from a flux of blood upon the part or of an outward cause as of a wound contusion or
pass by the great consent which is between the Brain and the Diaphragma through the Nerves that come thither and by the perpetual motion of the Diaphragma or Midriff by reason whâ—reof continual vapors are sent to the Brain The Cause of a true Phrenzy is Chollerick blood to which there is joyned also Excrementitious Choller and this produceth a greater or less Phrenzy according to its divers degrees namely in heat and adustion So a Pale Choller produceth the mildest Phrenzy and an Adust or burnt Choller stirs up a bestial Phrenzy But when the Brain is inflamed and the Membranes thereof the Chollerick blood is out of its Vessels and shed abroad into the substance of those parts which is done Two wayes either when the Brain is principally affected or when it is affected by Sympathy The Brain is primarily affected when it doth immediately grow hot from an external Cause as from the Sun-beams drinking of Wine Wrath and the like so that the blood which is contained in the veins of the Brain is moved and carried out of its Vessels and this may come from a wound or stroak or contusion of the head And a Phrenzy so coming may be called a primary or principal Phrenzy But a secondary Phrenzy is that which follows burning and malignant Feavers when a part of that humor which causeth the Disease is carried to the head It followeth many times in these Feavers That Nature being disturbed by the malignity of the Cause which maketh the Disease sends some portion thereof to some flesh between the skin and the bone whence we see Pluresies shortness of Breathings Squinseys Hipatitides or Inflamations from the Vena porta and other parts to follow these Feavers So if these humors are sent to the Brain they make a true Phrenzy and then the Feaver goes before the Delirium or doting But in primary Phrenzies a Delirium appears with the Feaver from the beginning The Signs which declare a Phrenzy to come are these watchings troublesome slâ—ep much talk an urin that is first thick and after thin and perspicuous heat of the head for these declare that hot matter is carried to the head the eyes are altered because the brain being hurt they want the animal spirit There is a pain about the hinder part of the head because the jugular veins are carried to that part and send forth the Chollerick blood These are the signs of a Phrenzy present a continual doting because the Brain is alwayes affected troublesome watchings coming from the hot distemper of the Brain seldom and great violent breathing because men in Phrenzies forget to breath for when by forgetfulness or great trouble of the mind by many fancies which are presented to a doting imagination and with-draw the animal spirits Respiration or breathing is very seldom it is made up with the greatness of the blast Moreover in a Phrenzy there is no thirst or very little albert there are strong causes of thirst present because the mind is sick and the animal spirits by reason the Brain is hurt do not send their beams to the mouth of the stomack wherâ—unto thirst belongeth The Pulse is weak because the heart suffers with the brain hard because the Membrana is inflamed quick and often by reason of the great urging and somthing moist because the brain is affected Moreover there is a continual Feaver because the inflamation of the brain must of necessity cause a Feaver The tongue is rough black and yellow by reason of the Chollerick vapors which dry up its moisture An Hectical or Habitual Phrenzy is known from Hippocrat 1. Prorrhet text 33. by smal doting and little perceived when the sick do not speak but lie still and seem to sleep But a Phrenzy or Phrenitis is diâ—tinguished from a Paraphrenitis in this The Disease which produceth that is sooner known than a Delirium or Doting and by the encrease or diminution of that the Delirium is encreased or diminished and somtimes it intermits and is not constant But a Paraphrenitis springing from the Inflamation of the Midriff in which there is a constant doting is distinguished by other signs Namely â—ecause in a true Phrenzy there is great and seldom breathing but in the other little and often Little because the Diaphragma or Midriff being inflamed cannot easily be extended and dilated Often for necessity that the smalness might be made good by the frequency Moreover in a true Phrenzy the voyce is high and the Patient cryes out loud in the other the voice is low because the instrument of Breathing is hindered And lastly In the inflamation of the Midriff the Hypocondria are drawn up according to Hippocrates in Coacis and the reason is because the Midriff is covered beneath with a Membrana coming from the Peritoneum and therefore when it is inflamed it contracts the Peritoneum and with it the Hypochondria Lastly The Signs of the Causes may be known from the predominancy of the Humor in the whol Body and from the manner of the Delirium For a pale Choller makes a more gentle Phrenzy a yellow Choller make a more violent an adust Choller makes the most violent But Chollerick blood causeth the most mild of al. The Prognostick of this Disease is for the most part deadly for few escape in regard a noble part of the body is affected with a great Disease The greatest hope of recovery is when there is Dotage with laughter and a decrease of Symptoms continuance of strength as also when after the height of the Disease there happeneth some beneficial evacuation as sweat blood or looseness But these shew the Disease to be deadly The Tongue quavering and Hand trembling gnashing of Teeth Convulsion a great Chilness or Cold in the beginning of the Disease as also when the Patient picketh the Wooll or Straws about his bed You may farther Collect Death to be at hand by a drop of black blood flowing from the Nostrils by white stools white and thin urine For al these signifie a great oppression of the Brain or a flowing of Choller from the whole body to the part affected For the Cure of this Disease the blood that flows to the Head must be let forth and revelled derived repelled and intercepted and that which was there before must be evacuated and discussed The distemper of that part must be corrected the strength of it and of the whole body is to be preserved All these things may be done with the following Medicines In the beginning of the Disease at any time of the day you must let blood out of the Head vein because the Disease is very violent giving a Clyster before or if blood do much abound out of the Liver vein or first out of the middle vein and a little after out of the Head vein If the Disease come from stoppage of the Terms or Hemorrhoids upon the vein called Saphena in the foot In the next place you must open the Chephalick or Head vein that you may draw forth
ought in their own Nature to be pure thin and transparant for the cheerful performing of the actions of the Brain and to cause cheerfulness if they change their constitution and become dark and obâ—cure they produce sorrow and fear Galen in his 2. de sympt caus chap. 6. by an Example borrowed from external darkness doth explain the matter Of those things saith he which are without the Body we see nothing that doth more terrifie us than darkness therefore when darkness doth encompass the rational part of man it is necessary that that man should exceedingly fear who doth alwaies carry about with him another cause of fear besides that which is external The cause of this eâ—il disposition of the Spirits is a Melanchollick humor which being possessed with thickneâ—s darkness and blackness doth infect the Spirits and makes them cloudy and dark And this Melanchollick humor is cold and dry and therefore proper for fixing and condensing of the Spirits which fixing and condensing or thickening of the Spirits must needs cause sorrow and heaviness For if the humor be thin and hot as is black choller from which comes madness it doth rather produce fury and boldness than fear and sorrow Therfore the immediate cause of Melancholly is thickness and darkness of the Spirits Animal but the necessary condition and without which it cannot be is a cold and dry distemper But if any shal instance of an Hypochondriack Melancholly from Galens third Book de locis affect is chap. 7. that it is an inflamation in the Hypochondria and therefore the hot distemper doth prevail We answer That that Inflamation or burning of the Hypochondria comes from the heat of blood long retained in the spleen and Meseraick Veins by reason of obstructions from whence many vapors are sent up into the Brain which though they be hot yet are overcome by the coldness of the Brain and are easily brought to a cold and dry temper which is proper to Melancholly But if the heat of those vapors be such that they spoil the temper of the Brain and make it hot and dry then comes Madness and not Melancholly So that in Madness or Mania and Melancholly there is this difference That in the first namely Mania there is a hot and dry distemper In the other called Melancholly a cold and dry distemper The former mentioned darkness of the Spirits confirmed by Galen is rejected of Averroes in this respect Because darkness brought upon the Animal Spirits and the black color of a Melanchollick humor cannot infect the internal Sences according to that vulgar Axiom There is nothing in the Understanding which was not first in the Sence therefore since that black color or internal darkness was not first represented to the eyes it cannot be perceived by the internal Sences We answer That the blackness of a Melanchollick humor or the darknes of the spirits doth not affect the internal Sences under the notion of color but as they are somwhat besides Nature in the brain hindering its actions For the Animal Spirits for the perfect performance of the Actions of the brain ought to be pure thin and clear But if on the other side they be impure thick and dark they hinder the actions of the brain by infecting the species which are sent thither even as a colored glass doth represent the species of the object to the eye with its own Tincture A cold and dry distemper which is propounded for a necessary condition to this disease of Melancholly may be opposed by this Argument taken from Avicen in Fen. 1. Lib. 3. Tract 4. Chap. 18. he saith That Stammerers are for the most part Melanchollick But these Stutterers are very moist in temper according to Galen Comment Aphor. 32. Sect. 6. where Hippocrates saith That Stammerers are most subject to loosness And Galen thereupon saith That Stammerers have the moistest temper as appears in children who are most subject to loosness We answer That Avicens Text is not to be understood of those which are true Stammerers which cannot pronounce the letter R. of which Hippocrates and Galen spake in the Aphorism aforesaid who are of a moister temper But of those which are called Trauly and Stutterers which repeat the same syllable very often before they can pronounce a whol word Which comes from their headlong phancy when they strive to speak very quickly for then the tongue foldeth its self and is constrained to stop and stay in the production of Words And these Stutterers are of a melanchollick temper Lastly It may be doubted how darkness of the Spirits should be an immediate cause of a melancholly Delirium when every hurt action depends immediately upon some disease but this tenebrosity or darkness can be referred to no kind of Disease We answer That tenebrosity or darkness is a Disease in number by reason that the coming thereof doth encrease the number of those things which are necessary in the Brain for the performance of animal Functions And the instance which may be brought against this Argument namely That a disease is an affect of a true part is answered in the Treatise of Vertigo The Proper signs of Melancholly are propounded in the definition namely Fear and Sorrow without any manifest Cause which are found in every kind of melancholly But the several sorts of melanchilly are known by their proper signs So these following signs do shew that melancholly doth only reside in the head namely an evil habit of the Brain or hot Diseases going before by which the blood contained in its Veins is torrefied and burned and at last brought into a melanchollick humor Short and interrupted sleep troublesom dreams giddiness noise in the Ears and no symptomes from other parts and especially from the belly That this Disease cometh from the whol Body appears by a melancholly habit of the whol body either Natural known by a black color roughness and leanness or acquisite coming by cares labors watchings course diet and the like That it comes from the Hypochondria these signs declare Heart-burning with no thirst often spitting sowr belchings and windy eruptions upwards and downwards rumbling of the guts pain and heaviness of the midriff perplexity nauseousness somtimes insatiable appetite heart-beating somtimes a swelling in the Hypochondria And other signs which shall be shewn more at large in the Discourse of Hypochondriack Melancholly That this Disease comes from the womb may be known by those which are set down in their order for the declaring of Hysterical Diseases The Prognostick of this Disease is thus The Disease is dangerous if Chronical of long continuance and very fixed For a melanchollick humor especially that which comes by adustion and inclineth to black choller contemns the force of Medicines if weak and opposeth the strongest whence a melanchollick humor is said to be the scourge and disgrace of Physitians But a new sprung melancholly coming of immediate Causes is easily cured For Galen reports in his third Pook de loc
which is easily hindered by universal Evacuations which ought to precede and those Errhins may be made of the juyce of Beets and Marjoram with white Wine in which Manna hath been dissolved But a stronger and yet safe Errhine may be made of the powder of Tobacco corrected with Cephalicks and Oxydorcicks or Medicines that help the sight for by that the Rhewm is drawn forth rather by the Palate than the Nostrils and the brain is so fortified that it wil not so easily receive the defluxion of humors from other parts The Composition whereof is as followeth Take of dryed Tobacco one ounce the leaves of Sage Marjoram Bettony Eyebright the Flowers of Clove-gilli-flowers and Red Roses of each one dram make a pouder to be snufft into the Nostrils for some few dayes Neither is it sufficient once to clense the Body of Excrementitious Humors with universal Purging but you must keep it in that condition all the time of the Cure therefore with Purges intermixed the Excrements which daily encrease must be brought forth which may be done with usual Pills made after this manner Take of the best Aloes half an ounce clean Senna Turbith Hermodacts and Agarick newly trochiscated of each two drams Diagridium one dram Mace Cloves and Eastern-Saffron of each seven grains sprinkle them with the juyces of Marjoram and the greater Celondine then dry them again in the shade And with the Oxymel of Squills make a mass of Pills of which let him take half a dram or two scruples twice or thrice in a month While these things are used you must continually labor to strengthen the brain and the eyes and the Patient must take diversity of Medicines lest by taking the same a long time it prove Nauseous unto him and lest Nature be too much enured to a Medicine and so it loose its Operation Old Physitians say Treacle is reputed to be of excellent vertue to this purpose which may be taken by a dram every night with Fennel Eyebright or Celondine water twice or thrice in a week Nutmeg eaten every morning fasting is much commended if it be long chewed that the vapor may be carried to the Eyes if you fear that the swallowing down thereof should offend by reason of the heat it may be spit forth after it is chewed Candid Myrabolans taken in the morning are thought to clear the sight exceedingly The usual Opiate is thus made Take of Conserve of Bettony and Rosemary flowers of each two ounces Candied Myrobalans two old Treacle two drams the Leaves of Eyebright poudered three drams Fennelseed two drams Nutmeg Cinnamon and Cloves of each one scruple With the Syrup of the Juyce of Fennel Rue and Celondine made up with Honey make an Opiate Let him take thereof the bigness of a Chesnut drinking after it a little Wine mixed with Fennel Water Nor must you omit external Medicines which strengthen warm and dry the Head of which sort is the Cephalick Pouder for the Hair a Cap and Fumigation mentioned by us in the Cure of the cold distemper of the Brain Finally You may apply Topical Medicines to the Eyes to strengthen them these are usual in Authors but they are of little force which cannot reach to the optick Nerves but if any desire to try some of them they may find enough of them in my Treatise of the Cure of a Suffusion In a desperate case when all other Medicines have been used in vain a Vesicatory applied over the whol Head being shaven in form of a Cap hath many times been very successful if it be twice or thrice used after the drying up of the former Blisters it is more advantagious CHAP. II. Of the Disease of the Vitrous or Glassy Humor THe Vitrous Humor is next under the Crystalline and therefore it is made by Nature transparent that the Species carried to the optick Nerve may be pure and clean If therefore the cleerness of that humor be hindered by the mixture of another and so made dusky according to the degree of that duskiness or foulness the sight is either diminished or abolished Moreover This humor may be out of order in respect of its scituation namely when any part of it by a blow or contusion shall be brought before the Crystalline for then the sight will be darkened in regard the vitrous Humor is more thick than the watery and therefore the species of the objects cannot be carried pure and cleer unto the Crystalline The first affect namely the Mixion of a Humor with it cannot be perceived by any signs but only it is judged probable by reason for the vitrous Humor cannot be seen or its condition known and therefore Practitioners are constrained to confound it and to make it one with Gutta serena because no fault appears in the Eye and this they do without offence to the Patient in regard any humors that are mixed with the vitrous are to be discussed with the same Remedies that a Gutta serena is cured But you may know that this vitrous humor is disordered in respect of its Scituation when it appeareth white under the Pupilla yet it is not easily distinguished from Suffusion except the antecedent and first cause be diligently observed For a Suffusion is caused by a simple defluxion of an humor but this transposition or displacing of the vitrous humor useth to come of a Wound or Contusion This last Disease is incurable for the vitrous humor being displaced can by no art be reduced to its former condition But this by Nature hath sometimes been done and therefore the whol business is to be committed unto her CHAP. III. Of the Diseases in the Crystalline Humor THe Crystalline Humor is the chief instrument of Sight and therefore ought to be kept more pure and perspicuous than the rest that that Sence may more freely be exercised And if it be soiled in the least measure the sence of Seeing is much hindered The chief Disease whereby the purity thereof is infected is called Glaucoma or the changing of the Crystalline Humor into a fiery redness and this happens when the Crystalline Humor is made thick by dryness as in old people from some drying and condensing cause it is often seen This Disease is known by a plain appearance of a thick white about the Pupilla and when all objects are apprehended by the Patient as through a cloud or smoak But it is hard to distinguish this Disease from a Suffusion which representeth such a whiteness about the Pupilla hence it is that many Authors do not distinguish between a Glaucoma and a Suffusion But they which diligently observe may distinguish them thus In a Suffusion there is a white in the very Pupilla and very neer the Membrane called Cornea but in a Glaucoma it lieth deeper This Disease is incurable especially in old folk in whom the driness of the part cannot be amended but if it be not manifest that the fault is in the Crystalline and there is a suspition of
a suâ—â—usion you may use the remedies prescribed for it Moreover the Crystalline may be out of place namely when the broader part of it which is flat like a Fetch or Lentil is not directly against the hole of the Pupilla but either is too high or too low and then objects appear double when one Eye only suffereth because the pâ—â—… 〈◊〉 â—â—eight line is lost which ought to be one and the same in both Eyes that whatsoever 〈◊〉 is 〈◊〉 both Eyes may appear but one and the same And if they be not in that order things 〈…〉 which you may prove by depressing or lifting up one of your Eyes with your â—â—â—nger for then the paralel is lost and things appear double But this Depravation of sight by whiâ—h objects appear double comes not only of the Cause now mentioned but also from vapors or water which hurt the Crystalline by which the visive Spirits are divided whence it comes to pass that the species of the same thing is received into two places which Drunkards usually perâ—â—ive when they see double Secondly The scituation of the Crystalline is altered when it declineth backward or cometh forward if it comes forward to the Pupilla then things neer at hand are not so rightly perceived as those which are more remote as in old men often But if it decline backward towards the Optick Nerve things neer are truly seen but not afar off and then is the Disease called 〈…〉 which was mentioned in the Preface where we shewed That these Diseases are only Cured by Spectacles Thirdly The Crystalline is out of its place when it tendeth either to the right or left side which is called Strabismus or Squinting when the Pupilla is not directly but oblique upon the Object and appeareth not in the middle of the Eye but in one side so that there appeareth more white in one part of the Eye than in the other This Disease comes not only from the displacing of the Crystalline but also from the Evil Disposition of the Muscles which move the Eyes which is either natural or else proceeds from a Palsey or Convulsion of the said Muscles Of what Cause soever it câ—meth if it be connatural it is incurable but if it come from Palsey or Convulsion of the aforesaid Muscles you may find out a way of Cure in my Treatise of head Diseases Finally Other Depravations of sight may come from the inversion of the Crystalline be it greater or less as when streight things appear crooked or when the Objects seem to be â—oulded which happened to a certain Physitian as Sennertus reports who going up a Ladder to take a Book from a shelf and turning his Eyes violently upwards saw al things afterwards turned upwards as though men walked upon their Heads which caâ—e by the attraction and displacing of the Crystalline For a quarter of a yeer after when again he turned up his Eyes violently his natural sight returned and al things appeared in right order Hence it appears that by a violent motion of the Eye that the Crystalline may be displaced and again by the same motion be set right I suppose that the displacing of the Crystalline was thus It was so inverted that the fore-part of it which is more depressed than the other was not right against the Pupilla but rather its side which being more round and convex might represent the species of the Objects inverted as we may observe in round Glasses which discover the Object inverted and this is true from the principles of the Optick art for in a Medium that is Convex and thick the species are so broken and as it were cross-cut That they which come from the upper part of the Object do represent the lower part and so contrarily but if the inversion of the Crystalline be less so as both the depressed part of the Crystalline and also the Convex part thereof be right againâ— the Pupilla the Objects may seem crooked Although that Depravation of sight whereby Objects seem crooked may come by other means namely when any part of the Crystalline is mixed with the watery humor then by reason of inequality of the Crystalline in regard of thickness the refractions are divers which are the Cause of Depravation of sight whereby things appear crooked This may be demonstrated by a clear Example A staffe put half into the water appears crooked for this Cause namely The species of that part in the water when it is carried out of the water into the air from a thicker to a thinner Medium is broken by the perpendicular but that part which is in the air is not broken because it doth not pass through divers Mediums as that which is in the water Hence it comes that the stick seems crooked After the same manner the species of the object which is carried into the thicker part of the Crystalline is more broken than that which is carried to the thinner which is in its natural state and not mixed underneath with the watery humor and so by reason of the divers refractions the objects appear crooked But since Medicines are to no purpose we shal prescribe none for these Diseases CHAP. IV. Of the Diseases of the Watery Humor and especially of a Suffusion THe Watery Humor is out of its Natural Condition when it is distempered in quantity or quality When the Distemper is in quantity it is enlarged or diminished and makes the Pupilla be dilated or contracted which Diseases shall be mentioned in their places When the distemper is in quality it becomes thicker and that comes from another Humor mixed with it and that is called Suffusion which we here speak of For although Galen 1. de Symp. caus cap. 2. sheweth that a Suffusion may come from the condensation of the watery humor without the access of an excrementitious Humor yet because it happens seldom and is known rather by imagination than art and is altogether incurable omitting that we shall speak of that Suffusion only which cometh from the afflux of another excrement or humor This is called in Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Latin Suffusio by the Arabians Water vulgarly a Cataract Some Authors would distinguish these names and make them signifie divers sorts of this Disease They call it in the beginning when the sight is only a little darkened a Suffusion but when it is grown older and somthing gathered into the Pupil appears like water then they call it only Aqua Water but when the matter is grown thick in the Pupilla and the sight almost gone then they call it a Cataract A Suffusion comes from a serous Watery Humor spread in the space between the Cornea and the Crystalline and since a Watery Humor is contained in that space it may well be reckoned among the Diseases of the Watery Humor This is the Cause of a true Suffusion There is another Bastard Suffusion which comes from vapors sent from the Stomach and other parts into the Eyes
it which few other Medicines have It clenseth very powerfully without any sharpness The same Fonseca sayes the Water following is admirable Take many Swallows beat them with their feathers in a Morter put to every pound of them four ounces of bread crums of white wine four pints infuse them six dayes and distil them in Balneo till they are dry then set that Water in a Glass in the Sun for twenty dayes and drop it into the eyes morning and evening There is a Water made of Rosemary flowers which discusseth Films in the Eyes after this manner Take of Rosemary-flowers as many as are sufficient to fill a Glass which must be well stopt and set it in the Wall against the South Sun thence will an Oyl come which with a feather anoint the Eyes with Some Authors commend the Galls of Beasts because they clense and discuss strongly but they cause pain with their sharpness and therefore are seldom used Forrestus Obs 35. Lib. 1â— commends a certain Fish in his Country out of whose Liver there comes a moisture by which he saith Cataracts are presently as by a miracle Cured See in the place cited the use of it William Lozellus saith That he hath Cured many stark blind after universal Medicines have been used with this Water Take of the Liver of a sound Goat two pound Calamus Aromaticus and Honey of each half an ounce the juyce of Rue three drams the Waters of Celondine Vervain Fennet Eyebright of each three ounces Long Pepper Nutmeg and Cloves of each two drams Saffron one scruple Rosemary-flowers bruised half an handful Sarcocol and Aloes of each three drams the Gall of Ravenous Birds Capons or Partridges one ounce let those that are to be sliced be sliced and that are to be bruised be bruised then mixed altogether with two ounces of white Sugar and six drams of Honey of Roses cast them into an Alembick of Glass and distil them in Balneo Mariae with a gentle fire keep this Water in a Glass close stopt for precious which you may drop twice or thrice in a day into the eye affected Zacutus Lusitanus commends the Water following in these words For an old Disease in the Eyes called Ophtalmia or any other which cometh of overmuch moisture and gross humors and mists as in thickness whiteness the Haw and Suffusion this Water is the best in his Experience if after sufficient Purging you drop six drops cold every night three hours after meat into the Eyes then about two hours after you shall have Water flow out of them in abundance Take of Aloes three drams Rue Fennel and Pettony of each two handfuls Vervain and Tormentil of each one handful Sarcocol three drams the froth of Nitre two drams and a half Sugar Candy three ounces syrup of Roses four ounces the Vrin of a yong Boy half a pint Lizzards dung three drams Horehound three handfuls Eyebright one handful and a half Ginger Spicknard long Pepper Cloves and Tutty of each two drams Balsom three drams Honey of Roses two ounces Verdegreese one dram Licium two scruples Radish leaves one handful powder those which are to be powdered mix them and infuse them in the best white wine in a Still putting to a fourth part of the best Honey for ten dayes and stir them daily then Distill them and keep the Water The same Zacutus commends the Oyntment following in these words For the drying up of moisture flowing from the Head into the Eyes and for Purging them by the Corners very strongly this Magistral Oyntment is excellent being applied after universal Evacuations from the Head and the whole Body let the upper Eye-brows be anointed lightly therewith morning and evening twice in a day three hours after meat one hour after there will slow plentiful Water from the corners of the Eye especially from the great corner Take of the Oyl of Roses three ounces Rose-water nine ounces Camphire one dram Tutty one scruple Honey two ounces the Gall of a Goat half an ounce Lupin meal half a dram Aloes Succotrine one dram Sugar candy half a dram the juyce of Horebound Fennel and Rue of each half an ounce Mirrh one scruple Ammoniacum half a dram Sarcocol one dram and a half Pouder them that may mix them and boyl them a little with a gentle fire and the grease of a Goat or Sheep and a little wax make an Oyntment according to art Finally when al Medicines fail when the Disease is almost desperate it were good to try an experience with the Oyntment of Quicksilver which Fonseca saith was his invention yet seldom used for in his 19. Consultat lib. 1. he thus saith I have thought sometimes that the Vnction used for the Cure of the French Pox hath power to take away Cataracts in their beginning and increase by the same reason that it takes away the Humors remaining in the Eyes from the French Pox for by it the Head may be so Purged that a Cataract may be Cured and I have determined to make tryal of it Fonseca had much commended his Judgment if he had seen Skenkius his Observation 309. Lib. 1. which is taken out of the 5. Book of Alexander Trajanus Petronus of the French Pox Cap. 1. One saith he before he had the French Pox was blind of one Eye with a Cataract or thick Suffusion by the Vnction with Quick-silver was freed wonderfully from his Pox and Cataract both at once Neither is it without reason that Cataracts may be dissolved with that Vnction when we see by Experience that very hard Tumors of thick and gross Flegm are powerfully dissolved by the Vnction of Quick-silver When a Cataract can be dissolved with no other Medicines the last Remedy is the Chirurgical Operation which with a Needle put into the Eye after the matter of the Cataract being thick and turned to a little skin thrusteth it to the lower part of the Eye so that the sight is restored as if a window were opened This Operation is successful sometimes but often not But when the case is so that no hope remains of other wayes it is better according to the Opinion of Celsus formerly Commended to try an uncertain Medicine than none But it useth not to be tryed by reason of its uncertainty by ordinary Chirurgions but of Quacksalvers who go to and fro practising and therefore the time and manner of the Operation is to be left only to them But because those things ought not to be hid from a Physitian you may find them exactly treated on in divers Practical Authors when the Cataract is Cured Whether it be with dissolving Medicines or manual Operation you must use a course of Physick long after because there is a great fear of a Relapse For the Eyes having been much weakned by a long Disease are very ready to receive any Defluxion again from the brain Therefore you must follow the usual Purging you must have Issues continually for diversion and use often strengtheners
make use of this following Collyrium oâ— Water for the Eyes Take of red Roses dried two scruples Saffron Spicknard the Bark of the Frankinsence Tree of each half a scruple Tutty prepared burnt lvory and Acacia of each one scruple Bring them into a Pouder and put them in a thin linnen cloth and tie it then hang it in three ounces of Rose Water and wash the Eyes often with the Water dropping into them squeezing the cloth as often as you use the Water If it comes from wind after universal Evacuations those Medicines are to be used which discuss wind in the whol Body and especially in the Eyes and so they may be fomented with the Decoction of Fennel Rue Dill red Roses Myrtles made in Rose Water with the fourth part of white Wine Finally If it come with a stroak you must alter the manner of Cure according to the greatness of the Contusion and if there be an Inflamation you must cure it as an Opfithalmy But if there be no Inflamation you shall at the first apply a Cataplasm of Bean flower Plantane Leaves and red Roses made up with Rose Water After that you shall often drop therein the blood of a Pidgeon which is a most excellent Remedy in all Wounds and Contusions of the Eyes CHAP. VI. Of the straitness or Contraction of the Pupilla THe Pupilla being too straight hindereth the sight as the being of it too large as was shewed in the former Chapter because a moderate largeness of the Pupilla is necessary for receiving perfectly the visible Species So when the Eye is in its Natural condition and is in a light place the Pupilla is contracted lest it should take in too much light if suddenly it be in a dark room the things therein contained are little or scarcely seen at the first entrance by reason of the aforesaid contraction Afterwards when the Pupil is dilated al things are seen rightly therefore in a place moderately light the breadth of the Pupilla ought to be moderate that it may receive moderate light not too much nor too little for making a perfect sight But if the Pupilla be too narrow it receiveth not light enough therefore they who are so affected the sight is diminished yet they see well in a very light place because at that time light sufficient will pass through a narrow hole if no other Disease of the Eyes be joyned with it Now the narrowness of the Pupilla cometh either from the original or first constitution and then it little hindereth for if they who are so affected see less in a dark or dusky place than they who have a Pupilla of its moderate natural breath yet in a clear light place they see better Hence Galen said in 1. de symp caus cap. 2. that they who are born with smal Pupilla's see best Or the straightness of the Pupilla comes from preternatural causes namely overmuch moisture driness or defect of the Watery Humor and want of Spirits The Pupil is contracted by humidity when the Uvea is relaxed and so makes the hole less or narrower For although the dilatation of the Pupilla come of the same humidity yet contrary effects come not of the same cause because if the cause may be called the same it ought to have the same reâ—ation to its effects but humidity is not in the same manner when it makes a Dilatation for it makes â—hat by filling and distending the Membrane but it makes the angustia or narrowness by relaxing it 〈◊〉 relaxeth when it is united to its substance Concerning dryness there is the same difficulty since it is mentioned among the causes of dilating â—he Pupilla But this is the difference When the Uvea is dryed and the humors of the Eye remain in their due quantity then it makes a dilatation of the Pupilla because it looseth not the extention which it formerly had as was said in the precedent Chapter concerning Skins extended when dryed make their holes larger but if the Tunicle Uvea when it is dryed wrinckled falls together and loose its former extension from the defect or diminishing of the humors of the eye then is the hole of the Pupilla made straighter And so the constriction of the Pupilla by driness wil be almost the same with that which happeneth from a defect of the watery humor in the eye although it may come without driness when by the powring forth of the watery humor the Uvea falls down Lastly she narrowness of the Pupilla comes from the defect of Spirits or from the fewness of them when by reason of the obstruction of the optick Nerve or some other cause the visive spirit cannot come to the eyes which when it is filled with spirit keeps its Tunicles extended but when it wanteth spirits they grow lax and fal together Hence the constriction of the Pupilla usually cometh This appeareth in very Old men in whom the Pupilla is made narrow by reason of the want of spirits This Disease is known easily being open to the sense for if one eye alone suffer by comparing it with the other you may perceive the straightness of the Pupilla but if both suffer by looking upon the eyes of another man who is sound sighted you find it out As to the Prognostick a straightness in the Pupilla which cometh from the loss of the watery humor in the eye is incurable because when that is once lost it cannot be recruited especially in old folk in yong people somtimes the watery humor of the eye hath been let forth by a wound and hath been repaired again A Constriction of the Pupilla from driness can scarse and very hardly be cured But that which comes from moisture in the beginning and being yong may be easily Cured but an old one very hardly The Cure of this Disease differeth not from the former for they come both from the same Causes namely Driness or Moisture which distempers although they produce contrary effects after the manner before Explained yet are they to be Cured by the same Remedies CHAP. VII Of Albugo or the white Spot called Pin and Web and of other Colours of the Cornea changed THe Natural Constitution of the Cornea Tunicle is destroyed when it looseth its brightness and transparentness or when it s infected with another colour It looseth brightness when it is grown thicker now the Cornea doth grow thick by driness as in old men which is incurable or by gross humors fastened upon it which happeneth often in an Ophthalmy when either by too much use of Resolving Medicines the thinner parts of the humor are dissolved and the thick remain Or when by an extraordinary use of cold Medicines the humors are thickned and the Cornea doth not only become thicker in that part unto which the humor is fastened but it also contracteth a white Colour which is called Leucoma or Albugo somtimes this also comes from a scar after an Ulcer whereby the Cornea is made thicker in
is good to take the vapor of hot water into the Nose or to anoint the Nostrils with Oyl of Roses sweet Almonds Violets or with fresh Butter or to snuff up warm Milk into the Nose by which only Remedy Forestus presently cured the Maid mentioned formerly Chap. 7. Of Bleeding at the Nose called Haemorrhagia THe word Haemorrhagia vulgarly signifieth any flux of blood coming from any part But peculiarly when it is named simply of Hippocrates it signifieth only that flux which cometh from the Nose as the first and most evident kind as Galen observed Com. 1. in 1. Epid. An Haemorrhagia of the Nose is a Symptome in the excrements of those things which are wholly against Nature For Blood coming through the Nose either comes from the Veins and Arteries in the Brain or from the Vessels coming from the Pallat to the Nostrils which ate like the Hemorrhoid Veins in the Womb and Fundament But since every Symptome depends upon a Disease as its immediate Cause the cause of this will be either an Organical or a Common Disease The Organical is two-fold The opening of the Vessels which is called in Greek Anastomosis and the thinning or rarefaction of them called Diapedesis The Common Disease is two-fold The breaking of the Vessels called Rexis and the Erosion called Diabrosis The Causes immediately producing those Diseases are either exceeding in quantity or quality of Blood Blood offending in quantity can either break the Veins or open the Orifices of them In quality if it be too hot or too thin it will flow out by Anastomosis because heat doth dilate the Orifice and thinness maketh it flow more easily Also the same qualities make a Diapedesis for heat maketh the coats of the Vessels thin and the thinness of the blood makes it easie to pass through the pores of those coats Lastly The sharpness of the Blood gnaweth the Tunicles of the Veins and ulcerateth them from whence cometh a Diabrosis The external Causes also do concur to produce this Disease either mediately or immediately Immediately as falls stroaks wounds and the like which break and divide the Veins They work mediately which do encrease warm and make thin the blood as plentiful Diet Drunkenness Idleness too much Exercise great Noise Heat long staying in the Sun and the like The Differences of Hemorrhagia are these Some are Critical some Symptomatical Critical Hemorrhagia's are in acute Feavers by the force of Nature endeavor to expel the cause of the Disease this way as especially in those Diseases which are joyned with the Inflamation of some Entral especially of the Liver or the Spleen which are many times discharged by these waies somtimes it comes without a Feaver when Nature dischargeth her self of the superfluous blood whence we see many in their youth have an Hemorrhagy by fits and others blâ—ed other waies A Symptomatical Haemorrhagy happeneth chiefly in Chronical Diseases in which filthy blood is produced by reason of the debility of the Liver or some other great Distemper which either flows through those Veins by the weakness of the retentive faculty or is sent forth by the expulsive as an unprofitable burden because impure blood is not fit to nourish the Body Haemorrhagia is known of its self But its Causes are thus distinguished That which cometh by Anastomosis hath this common with that which comes by Rexin or rupture in that in both the blood floweth plentifully but in this they are distinguished If a blow or a fall went before we should suppose it to be Rexin But when Ruption cometh from Plethora or much Blood as also apertion of the Veins thus they may be distinguished When the Vessel is broken the Blood sloweth constantly when it is opened at a distance and by fits only because the Orifices of the Vessels use to be knit and closed when there is less plenty of the Humor which dilateth flowing thereto but broken Vessels stand alwaies open and therefore blood continually sloweth till the solution of continuity be united Moreover the opening of a Vein is distinguished from the breaking by the substance of the blood For if it be thin it comes from a Vessel opened if thick it comes from a broken Hence it is that Hemorrhagy comes in yong men for the most part by the opening of the Vessels because their blood is thin but in old men from Ruption because theirs is thick If it comes from Eroâ—â—on of the Veins there will be signs of Cacochymia or ill juyce in the body of an Ulcer and matter somtimes comes forth or at least a salt Catarrh hath gone before If it comes by Diapedesis or Rarefaction the blood is thin and little The Causes autecedent and external are easily distinguished For if it come from plenty of blood there is a red face and large veins as also the Diet hath been large and hot or there hath been some external cause which hath melted and made thin the blood and these especially befal them who have very hot Livers If it come from evil Juyce it is known by its proper signs which declare whether Choller or Melancholly doth abound Moreover the Blood will appear corrupt either from the Nose or taken from the Arm. If it come from the weakness of the retentive faculty the face wil be pale and the whol body weak as also some Disease hath gone before by which the Liver was first weakened and then very little bloâ—â— comes forth and by degrees If the blood comes immediately from the Veins of the Nostrils it is easily stopt with astringent Medicines applied thereto and there will be no pain in the Head Contrary wise if it come from the Brain there is some pain in some part of the Head the flux is hardly stopped and things put up into the Nose do no good Somtimes blood comes from other parts as the Liver Spleen Womb whose signs are the pains and extensions in those parts If the blood flows from an Artery it comes with force it is hot pure fresh and clear but when it comes from a Vein it is dark red thick somtimes foul and comes forth with smal force The Prognostick of Hemorrhagy coming especially if it be Critical is taken from the hurt actions when the Excrements and qualities are changed as watchings and dreams of red things a great pain of the Head and Neck heaviness in the Temples and great beating of those Arteries ringing and noise in the Ears dulness of the Eyes with redness thereof and of the whol face hating of light involuntary tears itching of the Nose a drop of Blood upon the day that declares the Crisis difficulty of breathing an extension of the Hypochondria without pain The Reason of which signs is When the Blood begins to be carried to the Head it begets in the Head Phantasms of red things both waking and sleeping as it happened to a yong Roman which Galen mentioneth lib. de praesag ad Posthumum cap. 13. he had an acute Disease and thought he saw a
burnt Vitriol and is not very Escharotick yet it staies bleeding very powerfully by astringing the Orifice of the Veins if it be put into the Nose with a Tent. You may make Remedies to stop blood by restraining its motion by cooling thickning and coâ—gulating thus Take of Sal Prunellae one dram Troches of Amber half a dram Blood-stone and red Coral prepared of each one scruple the Syrup of dried Roses one ounce Plantane Water three ounces Make a Julep to be taken twice or thrice in a day Take of Conserve of Roses and Quinces of each one ounce the Troches of Spodium or burm Ivory and Terra Sigillata of each one dram Coral prepared and burnt Harts-horn of each one scruple Make an Opiate of which let him take the quantity of a Chesnut twice or thrice in a day Vinegar and Water called Oxycrate drunk plentifully staies an Hemorrhagy Outwardly to cool the blood and to hinder its motion you must apply cold Water or Water and Vinegar to divers parts powring it upon the Arms and putting the feet therein and applying to the Cods as also to the back because the Vena CÃ va runs that way and so the blood will be cooled when it is exceeding hot when the aforesaid Medicines cannot remedy some wet the whol Body with Vinegar and Water or put him into cold Water which is not without danger when the Patient is weak It is excellent to temper the heat of the blood to lay Epithems to the Liver and Spleen made of warm Vinegar and Water Finally In the most desperate Case when no Medicines will prevail you must use Narcoticks or Stupefactives which presently stop all fluxes and evacuations and motion of Humors and among the rest three or four grains of Laudanum is the best But take heed that you give it not to the Patient being very weak for it is to be feared that the native heat being very little will be thereby quite exstinguished One ounce of the Syrup of Poppies given in an astringent Julep at night will do the same At length you must come to proper Remedies which by an occult secret quality stop bleeding The most usual and best are these The Juyce of Nettles is extolled for strengthening any blood of what part soever and therefore it is both given inwardly to four ounces once or twice as also snuft into the Nose and applied to the Forehead and Temples made like a Cataplasm with Bran or the whol Nettle beaten Some say that the Root held in the mouth will do the same Hogs Dung is one of the best Specifical Medicines if it be applied hot to the Forehead and Temples or smelt unto or put dry into the Nose of which this is a form Take of Hogs Dung dried three drams the pouder of Roses to take away the scent of it half a dram Mix them with juyce of Plantane and dip a Tent therein to be thrust into the Nose Asses Dung used thus is also commended And Rodericus a Castro lib. 1. de morbis mulierum cap. 5. saith that a Physitian of seventy yeers old given to violent bleeding carried alwaies Asses Dung not quite dry in a box about him than which he confessed he never knew a better Medicine especially if when it was dry he mixed it with the Juyce of a Nettle or if wet he put it alone into his Nose Zacutus Lusitanus lib. ult praxis Histor cap. 2. saith that he cured one of seventeen years of age that was weak and lean after he had lost seventeen ounces of blood and used many Medicines only with this He gave him the Dung of an Ass very finely poudered in al his Drink and Broth he made Tablets of the same with sugar and gave them with steeled water by which means only the Patient recovered in seven daies space The blood it self which comes out of the Nose is not only vulgarly commended but by the learned to stop an Haemorrhagie by a specifical quality they fry it in a pan and give it the Patient to eat he not knowing of it As also they Calcine it in a Potsheard and mix it with the mentioned Astringents Others commend the Pouder of Snails burnt with their shels and others put the Pouder of Frogs Calcined into the Nose Pereda speaks of an old Woman of Mount pelior that she was Cured of a Flux at the Nose of three daies continuance by only Mints put into the Nose Among other Remedies this is excellent and usual The fine Pouder of Spicknard taken the quantity of a dram in Broth Plantane-water or other liquor not only by a specifical force but also by strengthning the Liver it stops bleeding Finkius witnesseth that a dried Toad poudered and put in a fine red Sarcnet under the Armholes or held in the hands til it grow warm wil stanch blood presently And that the blood wil be immediately congealed as if it apprehended some terrible thing Others hang a Toad in the Air while al the flesh is consumed and keep the bare thigh bone which they put into the Nose and then it stops bleeding presently While you use the aforesaid Remedies you must think of the taking away of the Cause which usually is a thin watery Humor or Choller which abounds in the blood and makes it move disorderly and provoketh Nature to throw it forth whence it comes to pass that when it is purged away and the blood clensed that then Nature embraceth blood most familiarly as its chief Friend and the treasure of Life and wil not labor to cast it forth Therefore you must purge twice or thrice if need be with binding and cooling Medicines thus made Take of Tamarinds half an ounce Plantane Leavs one handful boyl them to four ounces being strained infuse of the best Rhubarb one dram yellow Myrabolans half a dram Spicknard seven grains strain it and dissolve therein one ounce of Syrup of Roses and ad one scruple of the Pouder of Rhubarb Make a Potion In an old Disease that Returneth often such a Purge repeated once every Week is excelent And after every Evacuation Astringent Juleps or Opiates that are above mentioned you may make Juleps thus Take of the Roots of Snakeweed and the greater Comfrey of each one ounce Plantane Knotgrass Rupture-wort Fumitory of each one handful of the four great Cold seeds of each one dram boyl them to a pint and dissolve in the strained Liquor of white Sugar three ounces Make a Julep for three mornings draughts Instead of Juleps or Opiats or after they have been used a while you may give a Syrup made of the Juyce of Nettles and an equal proportion of Sugar two spoonfuls at a time every morning Nor is it sufficient to take away the present Cause of the Hemorrhagy namely To Evacuate the Peccant Humor but you must see that it return not again The Bowels are to be strengthened and their Distempers amended especially the Liver in which those Humors use to breed And the Juleps
Blood is when Nutrition is hindered there is a corruption of both when their qualities are changed So when the Air is infected in time of Pestilence it begets Leipothymia and Syncope as also stinking vapors and sweet also do the same with some Women and the blood is corrupted from evil meats Too great Evacuations whether sensible or insensible do disperse the Spirits The sensible are chiefly of Blood from the Mouth Nose Womb Belly Hemorrhoids Phlebotomy and great Wounds and next of other Humors which though they are Excrementitious yet because of their great Evacuation the Spirits are much dispersed and cause a Syncope These Humors are discharged by Vomit Stool Urine Sweat the opening of a great Imposthume especially if it be inward as an Empyema or outward as in a Dropsie when the Navil is tapped The insensible Evacuations are by the Rarifaction of the Skin and by the acrimony and thinness of the Humors immoderate heat hot Baths or Houses great Labors Also long watchings and fasting Lechery great anger and joy long and violent sickness do dissipate the Spirits as also great pain of the Heart Stomach Guts Reins Ears Teeth and of all Nervous parts An evil disposition of the Bowels doth alter and corrupt the Spirits and whatsoever doth procure a malignant quality which is adverse to the Heart as Air Stinks venemous and pestilential taken in by the Breath or bred in the Body from putrifaction of Humors as also poyson taken in or applied outward or sent to the Heart by biting of venemous Creatures Lastly The vehement returning of blood and Spirits to the Heart and an abundance of evil vapors gathered about the Heart and the parts adjacent and too much cold and thick blood gathered about the Heart and its Veins Arteries and parts adjacent do suffocate and destroy the Spirits We lately saw a Noble Lady a Virgin which from her Infancy was subject to this Disease that with every light passion of the mind she was taken therwith taken with a violent Syncope which ushered death in by a sudden return of blood and Spirits to her heart for when she should have been married to a fine yong man which loved her deerly and her Parents Friends and Kindred were solemnly met about it they gave her a Pen to write her hand to the Contract but she having not fully written her name fel down dead upon the ground Hence we easily conjecture that there was a great and sudden retraction of the Blood and Spirits to the Heart by a vehement passion of the mind which choaked the Natural heat and the Spirits therein of which she died suddenly Petrus Salius Diversus saw as he reporteth Lib. de aff part cap. 4. a Girle of fourteen years old fal into a Syncope from abundance of cold and thick blood garhered about her heart and the great vessels for having for a whol day a heaviness of head with giddiness and disturbance she died the next day after suddenly After being opened the blood appeared so congealed in the great Artay and Vena Cava or hollow Vein that taking it by the end you might draw it out like a Sword from a Scabbard Wherefore we judged That the sudden death came from the interception and stopping of the Veins by congealed blood This happeneth seldom for you shal seldom see blood in dead bodies so congealed for the veins have such a property to retain blood that even after death they keep it thin though without them it growth alwayes thick But Salius gives the Reason of this Congealation by comparing it with blood without the Vessels which as soon as it is cold is congealed and the sooner from the coldness thickness and slyminess of the Melanchollick or Phlegmatick humor therein contained Somthing like to this may be-sal blood constrained in the veins which abounding with vicious juyce thick and cold doth â—o sill the greater Veins that it stops the spirits and so extinguisheth them and then the blood grows cold and thick from those humors which otherwise would have been thin The Spagiricks refer this to a congealing Spirit made of a peculiar and extraordinary mixture of Humors which since it seldom happeneth the Disease is very rare And truly a simple Refrigeration cannot cause that concretion for then in dead bodies especially in winter the blood would alwayes be thick in the Veins but we find it alwaies thin but we may suppose that this Congealing Spirit is like that which causeth a Catalepsis or Congealation which makes the parts inflexible The Chymists do acknowledge such kind of Congealing Spirits to be in many Creatures Vegetables and Minerals such as are reported to be raised out of the Earth in some Histories of Men and Beasts who have been Congealed by filthy vapors coming from Earth-quakes or Dens so that their bodies became presently stiffe And Cardanus saith That such spirits are in Thunder-bolts in his History of the Eight Mowers who Supping under an Oak were struck stiffe and remained as at first the one seeming to Eat the other to reach the Pot and the other to Drink The Signs to this Disease by either are from the Subject which is more capable to receive it or from the Fit either coming or present or from the Causes that produce it The Subjects which are most fit to receive a Syncope are men who by some Natural Debility or Weakness from some Disease become faint-hearted Women rather than Men especially in their Terms or with Child As also they who have fine Constitutions subject to the Jaundice Spleen or Melancholly These things signifie that a Syncope is coming to them who are subject to it Anxiety and sudden disturbance of mind heaviness in the head giddiness an apprehension of divers colours green and yellow a sudden and often change of the colour in the face and of the beating of the Pulse When Leipothymy is present the same signs are but greater and there is often a cold sweat as also the sick complain of their faintness But these signs shew a Syncope A sudden failing of al strength a slow pulse low and at length stopping a pale and blewish face coldness of al the body especially externally a cold sweat especially in the temples neck and breast from whence the Disease is named The signs of the Causes are commonly manifest for Feavers malignant acute syncopal or fainting cause a proper Syncope or Swoonding are easily known As also those external Causes which make a sudden Syncope may be plainly seen As Anger extraordinary and Joy a sudden Fright stinking smels great bleeding and other large evacuations long watchings and fasting much lechery and grievous pain These things do signifie that the Humors and the Body are thin a sharp nose hollow eyes temples fallen and the gnawing of the mouth of the stomach trouble of mind pricking heat and great pain do shew abundance of Choller When there is abundance of crude Humors you may know by the enlarging of the body swelling about
Diseases But the Heart hath a Natural Faculty to contract and dilate it self therefoâ—e a Palpitation cannot be without its motion And they do in vain muster up Galens Reasons so thought by them to prove that the Palpitation of the Heart comes not by Nature but by a Diâ—ease or cause of a Disease For Galen in all those places speaks of no other Palpitation than that which is in the Skin and other external parts and not of the palpitation of the Heart which is of another Nature and Galen 2. de sympt caus cap. 2. saith that the Palpitation of the Heart and Arteries is different from that of the other parts Therefore the Palpitation of the Heart is an immoderate and preternatural shaking of the part with a great Diastole or Dilatation and a vehement Systole or contraction which somtimes is so great that as Fernelius observes it hath often broken the Ribs adjoyning somtimes displaced them which are over the Paps and somtimes it hath so dilated an Artery forth into an Aneurism as big as ones fist in which you might both see and feel the pulsation This immoderate shaking of the Heart comes from the Pulsative Faculty provoked But here may be objected That in Feavers all these things are found for this is an immoderatâ— Systole and Diastole by the provocation of the Faculty through some troublesom matter or by encrease of heat in the Heart To this we answer That the motion of the Heart in Feavers is distinguished from Palpitation only by its degrees and the depraved motion of the Heart when it is vehement is called Palpitation but if it be not vehement it is called a quick great and swift Pulse and is referred to the differenceâ— of Pulses Now the Efficient Causes of this Palpitation may be referred to Three Heads Either it is somwhat which troubleth and pricketh or necessity of Refrigeration or defect of Spirits which two latter may be referred to the encrease of Custom The Molesting Cause is most usual so that many Authors knew no other the other are rare and that is either a vapor or wind which troubleth the Heart either in quantity or quality or both The quality is either manifest or occult A vapor troublesom in a manifest quality is either in the Heart and its parts adjoyning or it is sent from other parts and this suddenly getting to the inmost parts of the Heart doth stir up the Expulâ—ive Faculty which being Naturally very strong ariseth powerfully with all its force to expel the enemy In the Heart and thereabout especially in the Pericardium are gathered somtimes cold and thick Humors which send up vapors to the Ventricles of the Heart which cause Palpitation But from more remote parts vapors and wind are sent to the Ventricles of the Heart as from the Stomach Spleen Mother and the other parts of the lower Belly Many times a Vapor that troubles the Heart by an occult quality ariseth in malignant Feavers Plague and after Poyson and somtimes from Worms putrified and the terms stopped from corrupt feed or other putrid matter which do much stir up the Expulsive Faculty thereof Divers Humors do molest the Heart either with their quantity or quality so too much Blood oppresâ—ing the Veins Arteries and Ventricles of the Heart so that they cannot move freely makes a Palpitation by hindering motion which that the Faculty may oppose it moveth more violently So Water in the Pericardium being in great quantity doth compreâ—s the substance of the Heart and its Ventricle so that they cannot freely dilate themselves The same do Humors flowing in abundance to the Heart as it happens somtimes in Wounds Fear and Terror Humors offending in quality hurt the Heart if they be venemous putrid corrupt sharp or too hot especially burnt Choller coming to the Heart and provoking its Expulsion Also Tumors though seldom cause this Disease as Inflamation of the Heart Imposthumes or Swelling in the Arteries of the Lungs neer the Heart which Galen saith befel Antipater the Physitian 4. de loc aff by which after an unequal Pulse he fell into a Palpitation and an Asthma and so died so Dodonaeus reports that he found a Callus in the great Artery next to the Heart which caused a Palpitation for many yeers Also Tumors in the Pericardium whether they be without humors and scirrhus or with humors in them as the Hydatides or watery Pustles and little stones bones and pieces of flesh are somtimes growing in the Heart which cause Palpitation So Platerus reports that in one who had a long Palpitation and died thereof there was found a bone in his Heart But Schenkius reports that in a Priest who was from his youth to the age of forty two troubled with a Palpitation there was found in the bottom of his Heart an Excrescens of flesh which weighed eight drams and resembled another Heart The Second Cause of Palpitation is necessity of refrigeration which is when there is a pretâ—â—natural heart in the Heart by which the Spirits are inflamed within and therefore the motion of the Heart and Arteries is encreased that what is spent may be restored and the heat cooled and this comes somtimes from an internal cause which is rare but oftener of an external as anger vehement exercise and the like As Platerus observed in a yong man who being hot and angry at Tennis fell into a Palpitation of the Heart and so died The third Cause is the defect of Spirits which comes by hunger watching anger Joy fear shame and great Diâ—eases and other causes which do suddenly dissipate the Spirits which defect the Heart laboring to repair that it may beget more quick and plentiful and send them into the whol Body sooner it doth enlarge its motion and make it quicker You must observe for conclusion that it is more ordinary to see a Palpitation which comes by consent from other parts than from the Heart it self For it hath a consent with all parts by the Veins and Artâ—ries by which Vapors Wind and Humors are sent Which all shall be shewed in the Diagnosis following The Diagnosis or knowledg of this Disease is directed either to the Disease or the Causes which produce it The Disease is subject to sence it may be felt with the hands somtimes seen and heard for the Artery may be seen to leap especially in the Jugular And Forestus saith it may be heard by an Example of a yong man that they who passed by might hear it by laying their Ear to the Window Also the Causes are distinguished by their Signs A hot distemper is known by the greatness of the Pulse and swiftness by a Feaver and heat of the Breast by great and often breathing and desire of cold things If the Palpitation come of wind it quickly comes and goes and is presently raised by little motion and the Breath is difficult with trembling somtimes at the knees mists in the Eyes noise in the Ears and somtimes pain of some
and they are eâ—pecially troubled therewith who are Melanchollick have Obstructions or want their usual Flux of the Haemorrhoids It is Disputed much among Authors Whether a Depraved Appetite require those Things which are like to the Preternatural State or Distemper of the Stomach or those that are Contrary Galen raised the first Dispute cap. 3. artis parvae where he teacheth That the Stomach being distempered doth desire Contraries and in its natural state and temper it desireth things like to its self Which Doctrine Avicen following Fen. 13. lib. 3. tract 2. cap. 10. speaks thus When there is an evil Humor gathered in the stomach different in quality from its own nature then it doth require things contrary to it therefore some desire Clay Coals Earth Loam Chalk and the like by reason of the quality that is in them to dry up and cut that which is contrary to the quality of the Humors But they who are in health desire judicially rather things like than contraries for since fancy is much imployed in stirring up of Appetite and is much stirred up from the disposition of the body it is probable that the humor predominating should move the fancy to desire things like unto it For as chollerick men both in time of health and sickness do dream of Fire and Anger and Flegmatick men of Snow Ice and Waters the Apprehension of which things proceeds from the Humors predominating in the body So when the seat of Appetite the mouth of the Stomach is affected by foul humors there long conâ—inuing they do imprint their similitudes in the Fancy which stirs up the Appetite to desire things like it though never so contrary to reason which is now overcome by the force of imagination Moreover If things contrary to the disease or its cause were desired by the continual use thereof the disease would be cured daily experience confirmeth this By which we are taught That Virgins in the Green-sickness and Women with Child do for the most part desire those things which are agreeable to their present Distemper and evil Habit so that they who have Salt and Adust Humors long for Coals Salt Spices and the like but they who have Melancholly or Salt Flegm predominating desire Vinegar green Fruits and the like As for the Authority of Galen some wholly reject it saying That if it were true That Diseased Dispositions should desire their Contraries al sick men of evil Habit would desire Meat of good nourishment which is not true for we often see that sick men desire evil meats and refuse good and we see that bodies inflamed whether they are in a preternatural state as in Feavers or in a natural as by violent exercise require cooling Some desire to Reconcile this Opinion of Galens saying That in this Pica the distemper upon the Stomach is habitual and connatural and therefore doth cause an Appetite like to a natural which is for things like it which may be thus explained When we say that every natural temper doth require the like and every preternatural the contrary the last is to be understood of distempers which come without overflowing moisture for they which are with much moisture when it is sucked up by the tunicles of the Stomach do rather desire things like the moisture with which they are wet because the Humor which now pierceth al the Tunicles although it be noxious yet it is not troublesome On the contrary when the humor only possesseth part only of the Stomach or is only in the bottom the Stomach desires the contrary to that which is offensive unto it but if it possess the whol Stomach and be soaked into its Tunicles then the natural Faculty is destroyed and so changed that it doth not desire any thing but what is like to the Humor so soaked in and so it may be rightly said that the humors was become as it were connatural Platerus and Sennertus do easily free themselves from these difficulties by flying to an occult quality and they take occasion from hence if the Patients so affected should require things like to the cause of the disease then by the plentiful use of them the disease would be exceedingly encreased but we see that they wil devour Chalk Clay Coals and the like trash and receive not the least hurt thereby by which men that are sound would be almost killed Moreover They say that Women with Child wil often void salt and sowr humors and yet not require salt or sowr things but the contrary And lastly they affirm constantly that there is no agreement of Coals Chalk raw Flesh and the like with the Humors And therefore they say that they must not rest in manifest qualities and that the Cause of this Symptome and wonderful Appetite cannot be taken from them but they must fly to some occult quality not to be explained Yet Sennertus confesseth that it is probable that this Appetite depraved should proceed rather from a like than a contrary quality but what that quality is cannot be explained because the things which are desired have no agreement with the humors either sweet salt or sowr in manifest qualities We may Reconcile al these thus The desire of Trash is stirred up by humors of the like nature and temper but these humors besides their native temper have a certain peculiar fault from corruption which since it cannot be wel explained it may be called an Occult Quality The Knowledg of this Disease is easie for the Patient can relate it it is manifest that the part affected is the mouth of the Stomach for that is the Seat of Appetite The Cause also may be found out by conjecture from the supposed desire of things like For if they desire Coals Salt and the like we may gather that the disease depends upon Salt and burnt humors which will more cleerly appear if any of those Humors be cast forth by vomit or stool if there be sharp belchings or salt a tast bitter sowr or salt As to the Prognostick This Disease is Chronical of continuance but not very dangerous if the Body by Nature or Art may be brought to its old condition which is not very difficult For in time the Humor offending may be sent forth by vomiting naturally or by Medicines and the Terms or Haemorrhoids stopt which caused this disease first may in time be discharged which if neglected and Nature sinks under the burden great diseases follow For when the first Concoction is hurt it is necessary that the second and third be corrupted from whence come great Obstructions evil habits and dropsies Or if the Humor be carried in greater plenty to the Stomach and partake of greater Malignity somtimes it produceth violent Cardialgiaes or Heart diseases from whence fainting swooning and somtimes death doth follow If Women in this disease begin to abstain from trash and to eat good meat with less disdain it is a most certain sign of health at hand Women with Child use to be freed of this
Cardiogmos it is evil for it signifieth that there is a great Inflamation of the Stomach or abundance of bad Humors contained therein The pain of the Stomach coming from Worms or Wind is commonly least dangerous because the Cause is not so bad and not fixed to the part But somtimes from Worms ghawing in the Stomach great Symptomes happen of which the Patient suddenly dieth So when the distemper which begets wind is stubborn and habitual it is not without danger for it turneth to a dry dropsie Hippocrates Aphor. 11. Sect. 4. In a Cardialgia coldness of the extream parts signifieth death at hand The Cure of this Disease is to be varied according to the diversity of the Causes If it come from the Diseases of other parts you must cure them But if the Cause be in the Stomach alone the pain comes either from wind or sharp Humors and Chollerick or from Inflamation Imposthume or Ulcer That which comes from Wind is to be cured by Medicines that discuss and evacuate that flatulent Matter as also the flegm from whence it comes And first you must give a gentle Emollient Laxative Clyster and presently after another Carminative that is expelling wind and discussing of the Decoction of Origan Calamints Penyroyal Rue the lesser Centaury Annis seeds Fennel seeds Carrots and Cummin seeds and the like In which dissolve Benedicta Laxativa Oyl of Dil Rue and Honey of Rosemary If the pain continue you must make a Clyster of equal parts of Sack or Hippocras Oyl of Rue or of Nuts with two ounces of Aqua vitae Or make a Clyster of white Wine with Oyl of Juniper or eight drops of the Chymical Oyl of Cinnamon or Cloves which doth Miracles Then foment the Stomach with this Take of Cypress Roots Galangal Calamus Aromaticus of each one ounce Mints Origan Penyroyal Marjoram Hysop Sage of each one handful Annis Fennel Caraway and Carrot seeds and Bay berries of each half an ounce Chamomel Melilot Rosemary and Lavender flowwers of each one pugil beat them and slice them put them into two bags and boyl them in Sack then squeeze them and apply them one after another to the Stomach and all the Belly When the Matter is not so cold this Fomentation following may be prepared which is highly commended by Forestus because it hath presently cured when other things failed Take of Althaea Roots half an ounce red Roses Chamomel Flowers and tops of Wormwood of each one handful Boyl them in common Water and Chamomel Water to one pint and an half adding in the end a little Rhenish Wine Rose Water and Vinegar Make a Fomentation After Fomentation anoint with Oyl of Rue and Dill mixed with Aqua vitae and a little Chymical Oyl of Sage or Cloves After the anointing apply a Plaister of Bay-berries or instead thereof a Cataplasm of Honey and Cummin seed While these are doing if there be loathing you may provoke vomiting gently or give a Purge against flegm After Purging give Oyl of bitter Almonds newly drawn mixed with white Wine or Hippocras mixed with Aqua Clareta or Cinnamon Water This following Juleps is most admirable to asswage pain discuss wind and strengthen the Stomach Take of Wormwood Centuary the less and Agrimony of each half a handful boyl them to five ounces and ad to it being strained one ounce of Sugar Let him take it two mornings together Amatus Lucitanus commends highly the distilled Water of Chamomel flowers as a most excellent Remedy to asswage the pains of the Stomach and Entrals of which you must give three ounces warm Or in the defect of that you may make a Decoction of Chamomel flowers which is so much commended by Forestus who saith that he cured a Merchant with this only Decoction once only given of great pain of his Stomach which made him to roar which when he had drunk off he belched and fell into a sweat and all his pain vanished as by an Inchantment so that he needed no other help You may also make a Vomit at the beginning of the disease which by evacuation may abate the pain of this Decoction made with Dill seeds or Agarick or the Roots of Asarabacca dissolving therein Oxymel Syrup of Vinegar or of Roses Solutive Galen teacheth that a Cupping glass applied to the Stomach doth presently take away pain But you must use this Caution That no crude Humor or very little lie in the Stomach otherwise the pain will be encreased Also you may with good success apply Bread hot from the Oven cut in the middle either by it self or sprinkled with Spices Lastly If the pain continue violent you must use a bath of the Decoction of mollifying Herbs that are hot which is most safe and powerful for it takes away the pain by discussing the wind and sending it forth by the open pores which it will better do if you give some discussing Medicine to the Patient while he is in the Bath for both internal and external helps concurring the work will be done The Bath must be very hot that the wind may be the better discussed and the thick Humors melted If by reason of the vehement pain Clysters can neither be given nor retained you must give a Purge in the Bath and let him stay therein an hour or half an hour till the power of the Medicine touch the Stomach Somtimes when the violence of the pain threateneth danger you must give Narcoticks which being wisely given bring wonderful effects Some mix Narcoticks with their Purges that the pain may be allayed and the Matter evacuated such as the Medicine of Elidaeus commended by Forestus made thus Take of Diaphoenicon half an ounce Philonium Romanum two scruples with the Water or Decoction of Chamomel make a Potion After the pain is gone let them who are subject to this Disease be purged once or twice in a month to take away the immediate cause of wind And let them use strengtheners such as were prescribed in the Cure of Concoction hurt That pain which comes of Choller is to be cured by the evacuation thereof with a gentle vomit or Purge or with frequent Clysters that are emollient not sharp or hot Afterwards qualifie the sharpness of the Humors with cooling Juleps that thicken with Emulsions of the great cold Seeds new Milk new Oyl of sweet Almonds Yolks of Eggs and the like In the mean while omit not Opiates and other strengtheners prescribed in the former Cures And at last when need requireth use Narcoticks Apply outwardly a Cataplasm of Bread and Milk with yolks of Eggs and Saffron Or Bread from the Oven broken in the middle and dipt in Vinegar Or Foment the part with the Decoction of Chamomil-flowers Violets and Water Lillies or which is best put the Patient in a warm Bath for that is most proper After the pain is gone lest it should return let the Patient Purge twice every month and let the hot Distemper of his Belly be corrected with a
say that the heat which is putrid in respect of the matter putrifying is native in respect of the Worms because the natural and putredinal heat differ but in degree but divers degrees of heat are required for the generation of divers Creatures and therfore heat which is putrid in respect of us may be natural in respect of another Creature So the heat which is natural to a Lyon would cause Feavers in us and by consequence is putrefactive Many flie to the heat of the Sun which is the universal Cause of al generation but we must alwayes acknowledge a particular Cause from whence the effect is immediately produced by the Concurrence and Co-operation of the universal Cause but here is a greater difficulty because it is a common axiome or theoreme That nothing can beget a thing more Noble than it self and therefore heat is not the chief agent in breeding of Worms which are in the praedicament of substance and heat is but an accident and whatsoever is spoken of the Sun the form of a Worm is more Noble than the form of the Sun because it is the form of a living Creature and that of the Sun is Forma mixta or the form of a mixed body only This Doubt brings us into that large and weighty Disputation of an Aequivocal Generation in the Circuit whereof very excellent Philosophers have Writ whol Volumns to which we send our Readeâ— and chiefly to Fortunius Licetus his Book of the Spontaneous Generation of Living Creatures Let it â—uffice in this place to say that many of their Opinions are brought to this They believe Seeds of many things to be in divers Substances which according to their divers Changings come to light even as the matter is more or less disposed by putrefaction or other alteration to receive this or that form and the Seed which is more agreeable to that Disposition is brought into act and bringeth into the matter a form proper to its self This Opinion doth not much differ from the old Philosophy which teacheth That Forms proceed from the power in the Matter but they think it safer to hide the Seeds of things in their Matter which are truly efficient than to acknowledge only the power of the Matter which hath no power to be an efficient for we must find out some efficient with the power in the â—atter which may raise a Form from it or rather introduce or bring a Form into it The material Cause of Worms is commonly sweet Flegm which groweth putrid by which it gets a Disposition to be turned into Worms but we think it no wayes necessary that food which wil breed Worms should be first turned into Flegm For Worms may breed of their immediately being putrified as we see in Flesh â—heeâ—e Cheâ—â—nuts Apples Pears Cherries and other Fruits which bring forth Worms by being putrified So it is in our bodies especially in Children which are given to Gluttâ—ny and eat the aforesaid things and take new commonly before the old is Concocted Hence is it that they putrifie and breed Worms But let yong Physitians observe this It is daily observed in Practice That Sucking Children that eat meat are most troubled with Worms and because their Stomachs are not able to digest it therefore it is corruption and turned into Worms moreover Milk is quickly digested in the Stomach and presently sent to the Guts and if it hath meat mixed with it which could not so suddenly be digested it wil be sent into the intestines with the Milk and therefore corrupt and breed Worms And observe That Worms never breed of Milk only so that as often as you consider the Disease of an Infant take notice Whether it have the Worms or no which Women alwayes proclaim and say al their Diseases came from thence as they ascribe al the Diseases of Women to the Mother and the Physitian may certainly pronounce that the â—hild hath not the Worms if it live only upon Milk and have eat neither meat nor Broth Galen â—â— his com aph 26. sect 3. taught this saying That in Children that Suck milk only no Worms do breed the Reason whereof is not plain Many say That in sucking Children the Heat is not strong enough to breed Worms And this is confirmed by Galen in the place cited where he saith That strong Heat is required for the Generation of Worms and thence he saith it comes that Worms are more in Youth than Infancy which also Hippocrates teacheth in the Aphorism aforesaid and which he seems to gain-say in lib. 4. de morbis where he saith That Worms breed in Children before they are born but these have not stronger heat than they that suck And Hippocrates gives another Reason why Children in the Womb should have Worms because their Excrements are reteined but when they are born they do not breed Worms because then their Excrements are not reteined But this wil not satisfie because oftentimes in Children that Suck the Excrements are reteined and yet they have no Worms while they live only upon milk therefore since the aforesaid Reasons do not content solid wits we expect the new Thoughts of Wise men touching this matter and in the mean while we wil briefly declare our Opinion and leave to the Judgment of the Learned We say then That Milk putrifying doth grow sowr and then is unfit for to breed VVorms but rather hindereth them for it is known that al sowr things do kill VVorms Hence it is that the Juyce of Lemons is so ordinarily given against them and in ordinary drink a little Spirit of Vitriol to sharpen it doth wonders It is Commonly thought That among the Material Causes of Worms Sweet things are the chief whâ—ch is to be doubted or because it is confirmed by a Common Axiome That Sweet things do easily turn into Choller and Choller by its bitterness doth kil Worms but we can easily answer this doubt thus In Chollerick Bodies and such as are sharp with heat sweet things do easily breed Choller because by over Concoction they grow bitter as we see dayly in artificial Concoction but in other Constitutions that are not Chollerick sweet things do not breed Choller but rather flegm when they are sent too soon from the Stomach into the Guts and so being crude and only half concocted they putrifie and become a fit Matter to breed Worms But there is yet a difficulty concerning Sugar and Honey which since they have a substance not subject to Putrefaction but rather that doth preserve other things from it cannot breed Worms This Reason convincing we say that Sugar and Honey will not breed Worms because their substance is incorruptible but being once bred they do feed and maintain them because the Worms loving sweet things do stir themselves at the approach of Honey and Sugar and get into the Stomach where they grow with speed from whence those Symptomes do arise which are proper to Worms The signs of Worms in the Guts are divers not all
and the Membranes doth often stir up a deadly Looseness After Liniments or if they be omitted you may apply Cataplasms or Emplaisters This following is the best Take of the Roots of wild Cowcumbers well bruised and steeped twenty four hours in Vinegar of Squills one pound clarified Honey two Pints mix them and boyl them to the consistance of a Cerat and ad in the 〈◊〉 your ounces of the Pouder of Cumminseed make an Emplaister for the belly to be renewed evâ—â—y day Or Take of dryed Cow-dung one pound Brimstone and Cummin seeds Poudered of each two drams New Wine boyled called Sapa or of the Vrine of a Boy as much as will make a Cataplasm A Cataplasm of Rhadishes bruised and laid to the Navel and Reins doth provoke Stools and Urine Galen Commends a Cataplasm of Snails bruised with their Shells which must be kept to the belly till it fal off of its own accord it draws water forth violently Valeriola makes it in form of a Plaister thus Take of Cow-dung one pound Goats-dung half a pound boyl them in strong Vinegar and beat them in a Mortar with three ounces of Brimstone and one ounce of Allum the Juyce of Spurge and dwarf-Elder newly drawn of each three ounces Lupine and Orobus meal of each two ounces the Pouder of Soldanella Annis Fennel and Cummin of each two drams common parched Salt three drams Turpentine four ounces Pitch six ounces make a Plaister It is worth the Observation which Wierus and Varignana say they have found by Experience that a Toad found in the Woods cut through the belly and tyed to the Reins doth provoke Urine violently and when you wil evacuate more apply another Petraeus also reports that the Pouder of the same Toad dried and calcined in an Oven drunk half a dram in Wine or other Liquor doth wonderfully expel the Dropsie by Urine The first Inventor of which Experience desiring thereby to destroy himself was cured thereby contrary to expectation Also this following Cerat made of a Toad is excellent Take of Toads two pound the Juyce of dwarf Elder three Pints Oyl one pint Wax half a pound boyl them in a luted Pot to the consumption of half strain them for a Cerat spread this upon a Leather and lay it to the Spleen it evacuateth all waters All the time of the Cure you must strengthen the Liver and Stomach if the humor doth begin to abate or is not so great that it hinders the Vertue of outward Medicines from coming to the part Take of the Oyl of Orange flowers one ounce the Oyl of Spike three drams the Oyntment of Roses the stomach Cerot of Galen of each two drams distilled Oyl of Mastich two scruples the distilled Oyl of Wormwood one scruple Oyl of Nutmegs one dram and an half white Wax a little mix them for a Liniment to be applied to the stomach Take of Sea Wormwood three drams Horehound and Rosemary of each two drams Red Roses two pugills Ghamomil flowers and Bay Leaves of each half an handful Orange peels and sweet wood Aloes of each three drams Cypress Roots Schoenanth and Spikenard of each half an ounce with two parts of the best Wine and one part of Wormwood and Agrimony Water make a Decoction with which Foment the Region of the Liver with a spunge first washt in Wormwood Water Take of the Oyntment of Roses and Cerot of Sanders of each three ounces Red Roses Endive and Sorrel seed of each one dram Spikenard Schoenanth dryed Wormwood and Styrax Calamita of each four scruples Oyl of Mastich or Wormwood as much as will suffice to make a Liniment to be applied to the same part after the Fomentation For the most part in a Dropsie the Thighs Legs and Feet have a cold swelling and for the discussing of it a Lye is good in which the Roots of Dwarf Elder and Elicampane Rosemary Leaves Marjoram Thyme Bayes Organ Salt and Allum have been boyled Although the things aforesaid are chiefly used yet somtimes they are not necessary namely when the Dropsie comes in a hot and dry Constitution from hot causes which disperse the natural heat as in vehement Chollerick Feavers for then cold things for the Liver mixed with warm Openers are best such as are used in continual Feavers And the Magistral Syrup above mentioned made of the Juyce of Roses Succory and Agrimony For ordinary Drink give a Decoction of Succory Roots and Calcitrapa or white Chamelion which is not unpleasant or of other Openers but in a greater quantity than above which may quench thirst asswage the heat of the Liver and moisten the driness thereof It is not amiss to confirm this Doctrine by a famous example though it be allowed by Avicen Trallian and others because it seems strange to some and is of great Consequence Baptista Montanus reports Cons 263. in these words I saw saith he in Venice a certain Predicant Frier that was cured of an Ascites and Tympanites there were with me many famous Physitians namely Papiensis Eugubinus Trincavella and others He had as I said an Ascites with a Tympany and a Consumption with a Hectick Feaver therefore we were bound both to dry and moisten therefore we were in a great contention I was willing that he should drink much but things that Open because he had many obstructions and that moisten because he had a Consumption I prescribed the Syrup of Vinegar with all things that provoke Vrine Eugubinus would not allow him to drink and told a story of one who was cured by dry things Papiensis to end the controversie said That he should neither drink much nor at all we argued till night the Noblemen brought their Physitians to their Boats and there Papiensis said to a Nobleman what he had concealed formerly If you would have this man cured there is nothing to be done but what Baptista Montanus saith In this case also Medicines of Steel Tartar and Vitriol are excellent because they strongly Open and provoke Urine without any great heat But the tart Vitriol Mineral Waters are best because they powerfully open the Bowels provoke Urine and correct the Distemper of the Bowels whence experience sheweth us that many Dropsies are every yeer cured at the Spaw Avicen reports in the Chapter of the Cure of Ascites of a Woman which had a great Dropsie and eat an incredible number of Pomegranats whereby she was cured And Varignana reports out of Platearius That an Old Woman boyled the Juyce of Plantane to the Consumption of half and gave it to one that had a Dropsie from a Hot Cause every day and so Cured him By these Examples it is plain That somtimes a Dropsie is Cured with Cold things and to these we may ad the testimony of Christopher a Vega lib. 3. art med sect 8. cap. 12. who saith there We saw one that had a Tympany from the Hot Distemper of the Liver whom we cured with cold things laying upon the Liver the Juyce of Endive and
is opposed with strong Reasons First If it should come of a slimy and thick flegm then it would often be bred in the Brain and the Stomach in which such flegm doth chiefly abound Neither will it suffice to say that there is not sufficient heat in those parts to harden it because according to the Doctrine of Hippocrates and Galen a gentle heat by a continual action is sufficint to congeal and hence is the reason why old men do more often breed the stone when yong men have hotter Kidneys because the matter of the stone lies longer in old mens Reins by reason of the weakness of the expulsive Faculty and so it 's longer concocted by the heat and at length hardened Secondly From Aristotle 2. meteor cap. 4. they which grow together by heat are melted by moisture as Clay But the stone is never dissolved with water Neither doth it hinder to say that a strong heat makes such a Concretion or growing together that it cannot be dissolved by moisture as in Bricks For first in Man there is not so great a heat then the not dissolving of Bricks with Water is not because of the strong heat they had but rather from the disposition of the Clay for Clay made of common Earth although it be baked in a Furnace wil never be hard as a Brick but alwaies be dissolved with moisture Thirdly From Aristotle in the place mentioned the heat that makes concretion must be dry But there is a continual flowing of moisture into the Reins and Bladder therefore such a drying and hardening cannot be in those parts Fourthly Stones bred in Rivers and Fountains in which there is no heat and in some Dens and Holes that are very cold the water that fals turns into a stone from whence strange shapes do arise Therefore we must find another cause besides heat and another Matter besides clammy and glutinous Flegm Fifthly Flegm made hard is like Chalk and is brittle as you may see in the knots of the Joynts But some stones are like flints which they cannot be from Flegm nor is there so much heat in mans Body to make it so This slimy flegm hath deceived the Physitians of all Ages which is found in the Urine of many Patients and they thought it to be the immediate Cause But they were out For first In the stone of the Kidneys such Urines are seldom made but often in the stone of the Bladder But if this were the matter of the stone it would be alike in both Therefore this Matter depends especially upon the proper Disease of the Bladder for it is an Excrement of it distempered The disease of the Bladder is this we have seen in the Bodies of them who have died of the Stone in the Bladder and who voided much of that matter that the bladder grew fleshy as thick as ones finger or thumb so that it filled the whol Cavity and lay next to the stone till by stopping the Urine it killed the Patient But in those who made thin cleer Urine their bladder was not altered The Reason of these accidents are taken out of Hipp. Aph. 66. Sect. 5. If there be no Tumor in great and evil wounds it is evil And Galen gives the Reason because there is a suspition that the Humors which should come by reason of pain to the wound are gone to some noble part Moreover it is Natural to all parts as Galen lib. de diff febr cap. 11. that they which are stronger send that which hurteth them to the weaker nor do they cease so doing till it come to the weakest So when the part wounded is very weak and therefore fit to receive Humors if they come not thither it is a sign that other parts are very weak which cannot send and that others are weaker than the wounded to which the humors are carried Not only the bad Humors are carried to the wound but also good blood which Nature sends to refresh it All these things are in the bladder that hath the stone A great uneven stone or sharp hurts the Tunicle of the Bladder hence comes pain and weakness And Nature to help it sends more than usual blood and the stronger parts send their superfluiteis These the bladder concocteth as much as may be into its self and so groweth thicker But when it cannot take in all especially the evil Humors hence come many foul Excrements which from the Nature of the part turn so flegmatick But in them who have clear Urine either the stone hurteth not which causeth the attraction or some other parts are weaker than the bladder to which the humors flow But because this Doctrine doth destroy an old Opinion we will confirm it by a cleer Example of the Womb. The Womb is Membranous as the bladder but in Women with Child it is rleshy and thick so that in the last months it is two fingers thick because Nature all the time sends much blood to it to nourish the Child which when the Child doth not wholly consume some part of it is taken into the Womb and so it encreaseth The same is in the Bladder though Preternaturally which in the Womb is Natural that when much blood comes to it it coverts it into its self and grows thicker But if without being with Child the Womb be distempered and made weak then Humors superfluous from other parts come to it which when they cannot be taken into its substance turns to the Whites And that flux is a proper Excrement of the Womb as the flegm is of the bladder The same thing is in the Reins though not so often as when by a stone in them there is pain and weakness Nature sends much blood and humors to them which when they cannot be turned into the substance of the part they are turned into a slimy Excrement which is voided in abundance and this vulgar Physitians take for Matter or Pus which is only flegm or mixed with a little Pus as when by the grating of the stone there is an Ulcer Some Modern Writers being converted with the aforesaid Reasons have made a Juyce which will turn into a stone to be the material cause of the stone called Succus Lapidescens and the efficient to be Spiritus Lapidescens They call the former a certain Humor naturally proper to turn into a stone And this they desire to prove by the breeding of stones in the Earth which are by many Authors said to come of Waters and things cast there into to be hardened presently some Waters in Caves to be made Stones and some part of the Wine groweth to the Vessel called Tartar and Urines that are cleer when they are cold grow to the glass And although the peculiar fitness of the Matter to be thus turned is not sufficiently known yet some say they have found it out saying that it is of Salt mixed with Earth Some Salts do grow hard in the Sun and are easily dissolved in Water and if they be
joyned with Earth like themselves by the force of the efficient cause they may be stones So we see in Wines turned to Tartar but Tartar calcined goes all into Salt which shews that it is chiefly made of Salt So in Urines that have much Salt especially in those which have slimy matter we see a tartarous Matter cleaving to the glass This Salt Matter which is mixed with the Urine comes from Meat and Drink so affected and they are cast forth in a sound Body nor are they retained in the Reins when the efficient Cause is absent We have called the efficient Cause Spiritum Lapidisicum or a Spirit that makes a stone Fernelius calls it a stony disposition which is in the Reins commonly Haereditarily But we like the foremost Title best For first some have stones which have them not Haereditarily if they eat or drink things that breed them because in them there is both the Material and Efficient Cause therefore the Hermets impute the Efficient Cause of stones to their proper seeds which in a Matter rightly disposed produce their form Moreover Many Histories shew that Stones come from a Stone making Spirit of Men Beasts and other things turned into Stones by a Breath or Spirit out of the Earth So in Aventinus lib. 7. Annal. Bavar an 1343. that more than fifty Country men and their Cows were turned into Stones And so saies Ortellius in his Description of Russia of whol Heards of Cattel So also Camerarius reports of a South wind that bloweth some times of the yeer in the Province of Chilo in Armenia by the blasts whereof whol Troops of Horses are suddenly turned into Statues of Stone and stand in the same rank and file in which they were This Stone making Spirit is not only in the Reins of those which have this Disease but also in the Juyce of those things that are eaten and drunk separated from them so that somtimes both come together Hence it is that some that eat but any Meats that incline to the breeding of the stone do presently produce it because there is a Stone-breeding disposition or Stone-making Spirit in their Reins But if their Reins be free from this Spirit such meat will not breed stones because their stone-making force is not strong enough without the assistance of the Reins to convert that matter into stone On the Contrary if the stone-making power be greater in the meats that are taken and they are often eaten stones will be bred although the Kidneys have no such disposition or stone-making Spirit So we see in divers places where the Water or Wine are full of stone-making juyce the greatest part of the Inhabitants are subject to the stone as we may see in Ovid concerning the Thracians in these Verses The Thracian Waters all things Marble make Their Guts turn Stone that inwardly them take And contrary If there be that stone-making vertue in the Kidneys it makes stones of any nourishment though never so wholsom So about three yeers since I saw one who for three or four months voided more than twelve little stones every day by Urine when all that while he kept his bed very sick and fed only upon Broth and Panadoes The Antecedent and Primary Causes either respect the supply of Matter for the stone or the constitution of the Reins by reason whereof the stones do more easily grow The Stomach Liver Spleen and Reins do much cause the breeding and heaping up of Matter for the stone chiefly the Stomach if it do not wel concoct there is a crude Chyle brought to the Liver and from thence impure and Earthy Juyces are sent with the Serum or Water into the Reins A hot liver doth bake the Chylous Matter and makes it fit to breed a stone as also being too cold it makes crude blood most fit for the same purpose A Spleen weak or stopped or otherwise disturbed doth not sufficiently purge the drossie part of the blood but sends part of it to the Reins which will more easily be turned into a stone And lastly the Reins besides their conjunct cause which is a stony disposition are an Antecedent Cause in two respects namely in respect of their Temper and of their Form In regard of their hot Temper they more violently draw the Stone-making Matter and thicken it more but in respect of their Form they are an Antecedent Cause if the Emulgent Veins are more loose so that that thick and Tartarous Matter may be more easily received into the Reins or if the Ureters and those Vessels that send the serous Matter to them be too narrow so that the thick Matter hath not a free passage but is retained in the Reins Thick and slimy Nourishment doth chiefly afford Matter for the Stone such as are full of Salt as Beef Pork Hairs Geese or things dried in the Smoak or poudered as Salt-fish Shel-fish Eeles Pulse Chees and all Milk meats hard Eggs Chesnuts Pears Quinces Medlars unleavened Bread and Rice thick Wine sharp or black or new Wine not purged standing Waters and such as are full of stone-breeding Juyce To these add very hot Meats as Pepper Ginger Garlick Onions old strong Wine which makes the Liver and Reins too hot too strong Diureticks which carry the Matter that will cause the Disease too violently to the Reins thick Garments Down Beds Baths inordinate Lechery which is a great Enemy to the Reins violent Exercue especially after meat too much feeding or long fasting great anger and other passions The Signs of the Stone taken by themselves are equivocal and common to other Diseases but if you consider them all together you may have certain Knowledg by them The First Sign is a fixed pain about the Loyns somtimes heavy when the Stone is fastened to the substance which being of a dull sence hath a weighty pain but as often as the Stone gets into the Head of the Ureters then it causeth a sharp and pricking pain and this is called the Nephritical pain or pain of the Reins and it continueth while the stone is there neither will it cease to torment the Patient till the stone get into the Cavity of the Bladder or turn back into the hollow of the Kidneyes The Second Sign is bloody Urine which comes from the opening or corrosion of the Veins which are dispersed into the substance of the Reins which comes from the rubbing of the Stone that sticks in the substance but if there be but little blood voided being mixed with Urine it looseth its color so that the Urine looks like a Lye This Sign is not alwaies but somtimes depends upon other causes But when it doth appear it is one of the chief which distinguisheth the Stone from the Chollick It useth to be caused by riding much walking and other violent exercise for then the stone if it be rough and snaggy being removed from its place doth cut and tear the tender Flesh of the Kidneyes The Third Sign is thin Urine
great Inflamations when more blood flows in than the Natural heat of the part can digest or turn into Matter It is destroyed either by a cold distemper extinguishing it or by an hot one dissipating and resolving the same A beginning Gangrene is known by an unusual heat felt in the part a horror and trembling seizes upon the Patient with a languishing and quick-beating pulse and with fainting away or swooning And seeing this Disease doth for the most part happen to the Neck of the Womb so that the part affected may be perceived by the Eye it is discovered to be soft Lead-colored black and carrion like and may be prickt or cut and the Patient never feel it and it sends forth besides a stinking and carrion-like smel As for the Prognostick or Predictions belonging to this Disease It is a most grievous most dangerous Disease and for the most part deadly yet it hath been observed by very many Authors That the Womb being putrefied and Gangrenated hath either fallen away of it self or been cut away the womens lives being saved which Observations of Authors Schenkius hath collected to a great number in the fourth Book of his Observations The Cure is performed with the same Remedies which are wont to be applied to other parts being Gangrenated if it be in the Neck of the Womb or tend toward the outward parts as namely with Scarrifications and washings or bathings with a Decoction of Wormwood Mirrh and such like with the Oyntment called Aegyptiacum the Cataplasm called De Tribus farmis which is thus made Take Barley meal Bean meal and Orobus meal of each two ounces Oxymel one pound Boyl them to the thickness of a Pultiss or Cataplasm Whereunto if there be added meal of Lupines Mirrh Aloes and Wormwood it will be more effectual If any part of the Womb be wholly corrupt and dead it must be cut off or if the Womb fall down it must be separated by binding the Ligature every day faster and closer Of which kind of Operations there be many Examples collected by Schenkius in the fourth Book of his Observations Wierus also relates in his Observations That he cured a woman of twenty five yeers of age who in the hottest of the Dog-daies had a certain little bunch growing in her Water-Gate Whereunto an unskilful Chyrurgion applying Pultisses that were not proper within a few daies all that part began to putrefie grow black and dead and the Disease past on with incredible swiftness towards the Dung-Gate And Wierus undertook the Cure after this Method First he squirted good store of the Juyce of Nightshade and Plantane with a Syringe into both the Passages three or four times a day between which times he applyed a bolster wet with the foresaid Juyces Vinegar being mixed therewith which growing dry was wet again with the same Liquor And in this course of reiterated Application he continued til the fervent heat was quenched and the putrefaction began to cease She took in the mean while thrice every day a Potion of the Decoction of Sorrel Scabious Burnet Damask Prunes the tops of Borrage and Bugloss Marigold flowers with Water Sugar and Vinegar made in the manner of a long acid or sharp Syrup Her Diet was spare but cooling and tart to prevent putrefaction On the third day the fury of the burning heat and of the putrefaction was abated Whereupon he commanded the black and dead flesh to be drawn or plucked out with a little Forceps Chyrurgions Instrument like Tongs or Pincers and separated round about from the live flesh without any pain and so to be cut off Then he consumed the reliques even to the live flesh with the Oyntment called Aegyptiacum And proceeded to cicatrize or bring it to a Scar after the same manner which is used in other Ulcers In the whol course of the Cure care must be had to strengthen the Heart both by things given in and applied outwardly Likewise Emollient Clensing and Refrigerating Clysters are frequently to be given which do much help the part affected by reason of Neighbor-hood Chap. 12. Of the Wombs Wind-and-Water Swelling or Dropsie THe Inflation or blowing up of the Womb with Wind and its Dropsie are by Writers confounded or jumbled together so that they call the Inflation a Dropsie coming of wind whereas the Dropsie properly so called is ingendered by a watery Humor Yet are they distinguished and there is a certain puffing up of the Womb with wind suddenly rushing in and stretching the same and causing vehement pain as in the Chollick which because it continues not but is soon discussed it deserves not the name of a Dropsie and such a puffing up is often seen in Hysterical women which have the Womb-fits There is therefore to be reckoned a two-fold Dropsie of the Womb one from Wind which is like that sort of Belly-dropsie which is termed Tympanitis or the Drum-belly Dropsie another arising from a wheyish Humor answering to the Dropsie of the Belly called Ascites that is the Bottle-belly Dropsie Some add a third sort answering to the third sort of Belly-Dropsies called from its cause Leucophlegmatia that is white-flegm Dropsie which is seldom seen in the course of Practice Yet I have seen a Gentlewoman which in one day voided such plenty of thick flegm out of her womb as might weigh probably six or seven pound weight which flegm long retained might doubtless have caused in her a Dropsie of the womb Wind and water causing a Dropsie of the Womb are contained either within the Cavity of the Womb or in its Membranes or in certain Bladders Touching the Cavity of the VVomb it is somwhat doubted how Wind and Humors can be contained therein seeing there is so easie a Passage through the Neck and Mouth of the VVomb We answer The inner Orifice or Mouth of the VVomb may be closed up divers waies either by thick flegm sticking fast thereunto and growing hard or by a Scirrhus or some other cause Mercatus conceives That a snotty kind of flegm is voided by the mouthes of those Veins which are ordained for the monthly Purgations and that of the said snotty flegm a skin is framed which covers all the inner surface of the VVomb within which thin skin the wheyish and windy Matter is contained But Fernelius thinks That water may be contained in the womb without any thing amiss in its mouth but barely by its constriction or pursing of it self together All these sorts are to be allowed of and may be confirmed by divers Examples And first of all Examples of VVinds contained in the VVomb-Cavity are recited by Sennertus in the Fourth Book of his Practice Part 1. Sect. 2. Chap. 10. The first is taken out of Valescus de Taranta touching a certain Jewish woman of Lisbon who taking her self to be with Child when she expected to be delivered a great quantity of wind came away and so her womb was brought down again The Second is taken out of Mathiolus de
which are transcribed word for word by Schenkius and Sennertus in their proper Chapters where they are to be seen Chap. 14. Of the Womb shut up or Imperforated VIrgins that have their Wombs closed up are said to be imperforated or unboared like a Barrel of Beer that hath no hole to put in a Spigot Now this Closure of the Womb is wont to be in three places viz. In the inner Mouth of the Womb in its Neck and in the outward mouth of the Womb next the Water-Gate And it is caused either in the first formation of the Infant when some Membrane is drawn before the mouth of the Womb or its neck or by some precedent wound or ulcer which growing whol again the parts of the neck of the womb or its lips come to be closed together or by tumors shutting or stopping up the inner Orifice or by some compression streightness or distortion which hinders the mans Yard and Seed from going in and the Monthly Purgations from coming out This Disease is in part easie and in part hard to be known If the closure or stoppage be in the outward Orifice of the Privity it is discerned by seeing feeling But if it be in the Neck or Mouth of the Womb it is not discerned til the courses begin to break out or til the parties begin to addict themselves to generation For when the time of their monthly Purgations is come pains and gripings arâ— felt in the Region of the Womb at certain periods of times with a sence of weight yet no flux of Courses follows the Conjecture wil be more probable if the Virgin be of a good habit of Body not troubled with any Obstructions or Cachectick dispositions The Disease persevering their wombs swel so that Maidens seem to be with Child and somtime their whol Body swels which likewise seems as it were black and blew through the abundance of blood But if the closure do possess the neck of the womb it is perceived in the first Carnal Conjunctions because it doth not admit the Mans Yard Lastly Iâ— the Closure be in the Orifice or Mouth of the Womb it is hardly discerned yet may it be in some measure perceived by the hand of a skilful Midwife and it gives some suspition thereof when the mans seed doth presently slip away as soon as it is castin As for the Proguostick If the Closure be in the Orifice of the Privity it is easily cured being opened by a slight Section But if it be in the inner parts it is much harder to cure When the Passage is stopped with a Membrane it s more easily cured but when the closure is caused by a fleshy matter as it happens after Ulcers the Cure is more difficult The Closure of the inner Orifice of the Womb is incurable because the Instruments of Chyrurgiry cannot be applied to open the same The Cure of this Disease because it belongs chiefly to Chyrurgiry we shall dispatch in few words If the Closure of the Womb have been caused in the first formation it is to be opened by cutting only The manner of which cutting is largely described by Sennertus in its proper Chapter But if the Closure have been occasioned by reason of an Ulcer as it happens in the Whores Pox it is to be considered whether it be only an excrescence of flesh not wholly stopping the passage or a perfect and entire growing together of the sides of the neck or of the lips For if flesh only be grown up endeavor must be used convenient Evacuations being premised first to prohibit the encrease of that flesh by drying and discussing Medicaments then to diminish the said flesh by Medicines of Frankincense Birthwort Bark of Frankincense Roses Balaustines Mastich Mirrh Aloes and such like Which not doing the deed we must come unto such flesh-consumers as are least painful as burnt Allum Vnguentum Aegyptiacum and such like And at last if this wil not consume the flesh it must be cut off round about with the same Instrument where with the superfluous flesh breeding in the Nose called Polypus is wont to be cut off But if the neck of the womb be wholly grown together we must try to renew the Ulcer and with the foresaid Medicaments to remove the superfluous flesh And if that cannot be we must undertake to cut it in the very self same manner as we are wont to cure the natural coalition of the neck of the womb If the passage of the womb be shut up by some tumor proper Remedies are to be appointed thereunto such as have been propounded in the Inflamation Scirrhus and Cancer of the womb If it be caused by compression of the neck of the womb or of the inner mouth therof the compressing cause is to be taken away which may be divers viz. A Stone in the Bladder a Swelling in the streight Gut Fatness of the Caul the Legs or Thighs distorted and going asplay the Cure of which accâ—dents see in their proper place In streightness of the Paâ—â—age which is chiefly caused by hardness or dryness we must work with things moisteâ—ing emollient and laxâ—tive with Baths to sit in Fomentations Liniments and Pessaries and so when the part is relaxeâ— a little pipe of Lead may be put in or of white wax artificially contrived and meared with Butter or some emollient Oyl which let her alwaies carry or at leâ—â—t in the night when she goes to bed and in the day time let a Pessary conveniently made of Cotton be put in the place being smeared with Oyntment of Marsh-mallows or such like In Distortion the same Method of Cure very neer is to be observed and let the pipe be so framed that it may gently bow the contrary way to the distortion and so the neck of the womb may by little and little be reduced to its due place Chap. 15. Of Barrenness THis word Barrenness or Sterility is not in this place taken in so strict a sence as to signifie only a total defect and perfect abolition of Conception but in a large and ample signification so as to comprehend all kind of impotency and every impediment of Conception namely When a woman at such aâ— age in which she ought naturally to be capable of Conception and using the company of a man doth not conceive And this defect is termed Agonia or Atecnia that is Inability to conceive or bear children And this Barrenness or Impotency of Conception is caused divers waies all which for cleerness sake we may reduce to four Heads according to those four Natural Operations which are required to perfect Conception The First of which is That the Woman in her Genial Embracements do conveniently receive the Mans Sperm into her Womb. The Second That she retain the same a convenient season The Third That she cherish and preserve the same in her Womb The Fourth That she afford fitting Materials to form the Embryo or first Conception and duly to augment the same as need shall
over wanton venereal embraces And in a word vehement motions of the Armes by drawing somewhat violently to a Body by turning a wheel or doing some such work may exceedingly further Abortion or Miscarriage The Signs of present Abortion are manifest of themselves But such as go before Abortion and prognosticate the same are these An unusual heaviness of the Loyns and Hips a loathness to stir Appetite gone shivering and shaking coming by fits pain of the head especially about the Roots of the Eyes a straitening of the sides and of the Belly above the Navel the flagging or falling and extenuation of the Dugs which made Hippocrates to say in Aphor. 37. Sect. 5. If the Dugs of a woman with child do suddenly grow small that woman will miscarry For the extenuation of a womans Dugs in such a case doth signifie want of blood in those Veins which are common to the womb and to the Dugs by means of which defect the child is in danger to miscarry But if Abortion shall be caused by some external essicient causing violent agitation of the Child in the Womb and a bursting of the Vessels with a pain raised in those parts the Spirits and Blood run speedily to the genital parts of which the Dugs being destitute grow smaller than they were Furthermore Plenty of Milk dropping from the Dugs doth argue weak Child and consequently portends Abortion according to Hippocrates in Aphor. 52. Sect. 5. But if frequent pains aâ—d almost continual do torment the Reins and Loyns reaching towards the Share as far as Os sacrum with a certain endeavor of going out of the Womb it is a certain sign of a woman that will shortly mscarry For those parts do signifie that the Membranes and Lâ—gaments wherewith the child is fastened to the womb are stretched and torn in â—under And if so be that pure Blood or such as is wheyish or water flowing from the Womb do â—ollow the foresaid pains and endeavors of coming out it shews that Abortion is hard at hand and that the Vessels and Membranes of the Womb are broken and the mouth of the Womb open At the same time the cituation or posture of the Child is changed for whereas it lay high and possessed the middle of the Womans Belly like a Sugar-loof bearing out it is now gathered round like a Foot-ball and roiled down towards the Water gate Also oftentimes there follow grievous Symptomes as shiverings tremblings Palpitations of the Heart Swoonings and abundant Bleeding Hereunto may be added what Hipâ—ocâ—aâ—es teacheth us in the second Book of Popular Sicknesses Text 17. That if after violent external câ—uses such as are blow a fall and such like vehement pain and perturbation arise in a Woman with Child she suddenly or at most the same day miscarries but if the external cause were weak the Abortion may be differred till the third day which being once over there is no longer danger of Abortion because such wounds and hurts are wont to grow well again upon the third or at most the fourth day or very much to be mitigated and asswaged whereupon the Child is again confirmed in the Womb and retained Which Precept is of great moment in the Practice oâ— Phyâ—ick that women with child being hurt by some external accident should keep their bed for â—nree daies or longer and use such Remedies as prevent Abortion The Prognosticks oâ— Abortion may be divers after this manner Women are more endangered by Abortion than by due and timely Child-birth because it is more violent and unseasonable for as in ripe Fruit the Stalks are loosened from the Boughs and the Fruit falls of it self so in a Natural Birth the Vessels and Ligaments wherewith the Child is tied to the Womb are loosened and untied as it were of their own accord which in case of Abortion must needs be violently broken asunder Very many women become Barren by their Miscarriages by reason of those exceeding rendings tearing which do wholly overthrow the dispositions of the Womb. Much bleeding accompanied with fainting raving and convulsions is wont to cause death and Aresaeus testifies he never saw any escape who in the time of their Abortion or aiterwards had Convulsion fits Inâ—lamation of the Womb caused by Abortion is for the most part deadly for Blood flowing to the Womb in great quantity is not purged out but putrefies therein and regurgitatâ—s or slows back into the upper parts whence arise burning Feavers pantings of the Heart Heart-burning and other Symptomes enumerated before Abortion is more dangerous in a woman that never bore Child before because being unaccustomed to Pains and having those Passages more strait she is longer and more vehemently tormented Women very lean or very fat are more endangered by Miscarriage the former because of their weakness the latter because of the narrowness of those Passages by which the Child must come forth Abortion is more dangerous in the sixth seventh and eight months because the Child being the greater is excluded with the more pain and difficulty Women which have a more loose and moist womb than ordinary domiscarry commonly without danger especially in the first month because those parts in such women do easily give way whence their pain and trouble is the less Hippocrates in the second Book of Popular Sicknesses affirms That to miscarry of a male Conception of three-score daies old helps a Woman whose Courses are stopped By stopping of Courses he understands only their imminution when women are not sufficiently or conveniently purged at their monthly seasons for by such an Abortion or Miscarriage as aforesaid those stopped passages are opened and the Blood is drawn towards the womb which came thither but slowly in former times Our ordinary women seem to have taken notice of the truth of this saying of Hippocrates who touching an Abortion of a few months are wont to say by way of proverb Amiscarrying woman is half with child again The Cure of Abortion consists in Preservation for that which is past cannot be helped But all the Symptomes which follow Abortion are the same which accompany women duly brought to bed The Preservation from Abortion hath two principal Points or Heads The one concerns the woman before she is with child The other when she is with child Before the woman is with child all evil dispositions of body which are wont to cause Abortion must be removed as fulness of blood badness of Humors and peculiar Diseases of the womb viz. Distempers Swellings Ulcers and such like Fulness of Blood opens the Veins of the womb or strangles the Infant while it is in the womb This if it be a pure and simple Plenitude may be cured by Blood-letting such as shall answer the quantity of blood super-abounding But badness of Humors is either chollerick and sharp so as to open the Orisices of the Veins or by provoking Nature to stir up the expulsive faculty whereby the child comes to be expelled with those evil humors or by
one foot or when it endeavors to come forth doubled with its breech or its belly foremost In regard of the Childs Adjuncts or certain things belonging to the Child difficulty of Travail happens when those membranes which enclose the Child are more thin than ordinary so that they come to break sooner than they should whence followed an over quick effusion of the waters conteined therein whereupon the mouth of the Womb remaines dry at the time of the exclusion of the Infant or where the foresaid Membranes are more thick and compact than ordinary by which means the Child is hardly able to breake them External Causes depend upon things necessary and things contingent the things necessary are such as Physitians commonly call res non naturales things not natural So a cold and dry air and the Northern-wind are very hurtfull to women in travail because they straiten the whol Body drive the Blood and spirits inwards and prove very destructive to the Infant coming forth of so warm a place as the Womb. Also air more hot than ordinary dissipates the spirits and exhausts the strength both of Mother and Child easily introduceing a feaverish Inflammation into a Body replenished with ill humors and exagitated Meates raw and hard to digest or of an astringent quality taken in a large Quantity before the time of travail may render the same laborious the stomach being weakened and the common passages stopped which in this case ought to be very free and open Sleepyness and Sottishess do slacken the endeavours both of the Mother and the Child and shew nature to be weak Unseasonable stirring of the woman doth much delay the Birth of the Child whenas she refuses to stand to walk lie down or to sit upon the Midwifes stoole as need shall require or when she is unduely agitated to and fro whence it comes to pass that the Child cannot lâ—â—ue in a sitting posture or looses the good posture it had by reason of the Mothers undue and disorderly moveing her self The retention of Excrements at the time of Travail as of Urin distending the Bladder of hard excrements in the streight Gutt and hemorrhoids much Swelled do straiten the neck of the Womb and divert nature from her endeavour of expelling the Child And in a word vehement Passions of mind as Fear Sadness Anger may very much encrease the difficulty of Child birth To things contingent are referred Blowes Falls wounds which may very much hinder the Birth hereunto likewise appertain the parties assistant in time of travail to help the labouring woman viz. strong women and maid servants which may lift her up and support her when she is in her labours and especially an expert Midwife which ought to mannage the whol Business For if the Midwife err in her office it is wont to cause difficulty of Birth For sometimes the Midwises do over soon exhort the Childing woman to hold their breath and to strain themselves to exclude their Child while the bands which fasten the Child to the Womb are as yet unloosed by which means the strength of the woman is wasted before hand which should have bin reserved to the just time of her travail Yea and the truth is while the Midwifes do oversoon perswade the Childing women that the time of their travail is at hand they bend all their strength to exclude the Child and oftentimes violently break those bands with which the Child is fastened and cast themselves into no small Jeopardy Hard Travail is known both by the Childing woman and by the Assistants but especially by the Midwife And in the first place if the woman continue a longer time than ordinary in her Labors as two three four or more daies whereas a truly natural Child-birth ought to be accomplished within the space of 24. Houres Again it is a Sign of an hard Labor if the womans paines be weak and are long before they return and if her paines are more about her Back than Privities And the Causes of hard travail are known by relation of the Childing woman and are for the most part evidently to be seen So the weakness of the woman her over leanness or over fatness is perceived by the habit of her Body Diseases of the Womb are known by their proper Signes The Childs weakness is known by its weak and slow moving it self But the Signes of a dead Child shall be declared in the next Chapter The greatness of the Child may be gathered from the stature of the Parents especially when a big-Bodyed man is matched with a little woman But when there are none of these Signes and the woman labours stoutly and the Child stirrs and makes its way sufficiently and yet the travail is hard and painful it is a token that the secundine or After-birth is stronger than ordinary and can hardly be broken which conjecture is more probable if no water or moisture come from the woman dureing her Labors The disorderly posture of the Child is perceived by the Midwife and the other Causes are visible to the Eye as we said before As for the Prognostick Hard-Travail is of it self dangerous in which sometimes the Mother sometimes the Child and sometimes both do loose their lives If a woman be four daies in Labor it s hardly possible the Child should live Sleepy diseases and convulsions which befall a woman in Travail are for the most part deadly Sneezing which befalls a woman in sore Travail is good Out of Hippocrates in his Aphorismes To cure difficulty in Child-birth first all causes which may delay the birth are as much as may be to be removed And afterwards such Medicines as further the Birth are Methodically to be administred And in the first place it is common among the women to give a groaning wife a spoonfull or two of Cinnamon Water Or Cinnamon it self in Pouder with a little Saffron may be given or half a dram of Consectio Alkermes may be drunk in a little Broath Also Saffron alone being given ten graines in every Mess of Broath the woman takes or every hour being taken in a little Wine is very good Or. Take Oyl of sweet Almonds and White Wine of each two ounces Saffron and Cinnamon of eath twelve graines Confectio Alkermes half a dram Syrup of Maiden Hair one ounce and an half Mix all and make thereof a potion If this shall not suffice but that stronger things must be used the following potion wil be most effectual which I have had frequent experience of Take Dictamnus Cretensis both the Birthworts and Trochiscs or Cakes of Myrrh of each half asc uple Saffron and Cinnamon of each twelve grains Confectio Alkermes half a dram Cinnamon Water half an ounce Orange-flower and Mugwort Water of each an ounce and an half Make all into a potion Among the more effectual sort of Medicaments are numbred Oyl of Amber Oyl of Cinnamon and extract of Saffron which do in a little quantity work â—â—ch viz. Extract of Saffron
Bay-leaves Calaminth Carrot seed Cummin and Caraway Seeds Flowers of Cheiri and Chamomel in Water white Wine or Milk Or the following Cataplasm may be applied Take three or four Onions well boyled in Water beat them in a Morter and put thereto Seeds of Line and Cummin beaten of each one handful As much Chamomel flowers Barley Meal as much as shall suffice to make all into a Pultiss And if need be add a little of the Water wherein the Onions were boyled Spread it upon a Cloth and apply it warm to her Navel It is likewise profitable to apply the Skin of a weather newly flead off while it is warm to her Belly For this kind of warmth is very neer of kin to our Natural heat concocts and mitigates the cause of the pain also it hinders the Skin of the Belly from gathering into wrinkles These following Medicines may be given inwardly Take Carrot Seeds poudered one dram white Wine three ounces Mix them Give it warm twice a day Or Take Nutmeg Annis seed Cinnamon of each one scruple mix them into a Pouder to be taken in white Wine or give one scruple of Oyl of Nutmegs in Broth. Or Take Date and Peach Kernels of each half a dram Nutmegs four scruples Pouder of Diamargaritum Calidum two drams Annis seed one dram Cinnamon two scruples Saffron ten grains Sugar the weight of all the rest Make all into a most fine Pouder whereof give two drams in Wine twice or thrice a day if the pains are much Forestus gave a Decoction of Chamomel flowers in Beer or a Decoction of Mugwort and Chamomel in Puller Broth with good â—ucceâ—s It 's good presently after the is brought to bed to give her the Broth of an old Cock three daies together earâ—y in a morning while she is fasting with a little Cinnamon and Saffron The following Pouder taked presently after the delivery of a woman doth wonderfully preserve her from Gripings insomuch that it is thought If it be given a woman after her first Childing she wil never after in her following Lyings-In be troubled with these Gripes Take the greater Comfry Root dried one dram Peach Kernels and Nutmeg of each two scruples Amber half a dram Amber-greece half a scruple Make all into a Pouder of which let her take one dram in white Wine or if she be Feaverish in Broth. For her ordinary Drink let her use a Decoction of Mugwort with Cinnamon If the Gripings be caused by Chollerick and sharp humors they are cured much after the same manner that the Chollick is cured when it proceeds from Choller As for Example Take Syrup of Vioâ—â—ts and Borrage of each one ounce Mucilage of Quince seeds drawn out with Violet Water half an ounce Water of Borrage and Scorzonera of each three ounces Mix all make thereof a Julep for two Doses Or Take Oyl of sweet Almonds two ounces Syrup of Violets an ounce Borrage Water half an ounce Mix all for a draught External Medicines must likewise be used such as are laxative and emollient which do likewise by one and the same labor ease pain Oftentimes after they are brought to bed women are pained in their Groyn by reason of their wombs being gathered together like a ball in their Groyn It is cured by applying to their Navel a Plaister of Galbanum and Anafoetida in the midst whereof some grains of Musk must be put Chap. 24. Of Acute Diseases of Women in Child-bed WHat we said before touching the Acute Diseases of women with Child we may now repeat touching the Acute Diseases of women in Child-bed viz. That they have the same Essence and the same Signs with the like Diseases in women which are not with Child and in men So that we shal refer the Reader for the Theory of these Diseases to their proper Chapters Now these Acute Diseases are for the most part continual Feavers both Essential as Synchus putrida a continual Tertian and the rest and also Symptomatical which accompany inward Inflamations as the Pleurisie Inflamation of the Lungs Inflamation of the Liver Phrenzy and such like Yet there is a peculiar sort of Feaver which besals almost al women in Child-bed which is called by them the Feaver of their Milk which is wont to befal them about the third or fourth day after they are brought to bed when their Milk begins to encrease in their Breasts and it ariseth from the reflux of the blood from the womb to the Dugs and the motion and agitation thereof Which kind of Feaver is reckoned among the Diary Feavers of the longest durance neither needs it any Medicines because within three or four daies viz. about the ninth after her delivery it is finished by sweat It is distinguished from putrid Feavers because commonly it seizes the woman about the fourth day after her being delivered and her Dugs begin to be filled with Milk and to be troubled with hardness pain and heat with heat and heaviness in her Back and Shoulders also her Child-bed Purgations slow duly which seldom is seen in putrid Feavers Now putrid Feavers do befal women in Child-bed from three causes viz. Suppression of their Child-bed Purgations or diminishing by the heaping together of bad Humors during the time of their Belly-bearing which were agitated by her Labors or by Errors in their Diet. Some add immoderate flux of the Child-bed Purga ions which is rather a sign of the secret badness of Humors causing the Feaver but cannot be it self any cause thereof In suppression of the Child-bed Purgations the blood and vitious humors which are collected during the whol time of her going with child do flow back again into the greater Veins and there putrefie and somtimes are câ—rrâ—ed to the Liver Spleen and other parts in which they raise Inflamations or if they abide in the Veins of the womb they putrefie and so cause a Feaver in those women which were before in perfect health But if the Child-bed Purgations duly flowing a feaver arise it comes either from superfluity of Choller or from errors in Diet. Evil Humors agitated by the Labors and Pains of Travel do easily inflame and putrefie and stir up a feaver Errors of Diet may happen divers waies And first in point of eating in which women that he In are wont to be very faulty stopping themselves with plenty and variety of Dishes which cannot be by them digested but causeth putrefaction in their Bodies Another error is committed when Childing women do unadvisedly expose themselves unto the cold Air especially while their Milk-feaver is in its vigor which is wont to be terminated by sweating and transpiration which is hindered by heedless admission of the cold Air whence it comes to pass that the Feaver which of it self was void of danger and would in a few daies have ceased is changed into a dangerous putrid Feaver There is yet another frequent Cause of the Feavers of Childing Women viz. When the After-births are not wholly cast forth but some
their superfluities to the Joynts if they be disposed to receive them Now that disposition of the Joynts which makes them fit to receive a Fluxion of Humors that I may take this occasion to open the condition of a receiving Part is their weakness either native from the Parents or arising from other Preternatural Causes which we shall speak of by and by Seeing therefore it is established by Physitians as a most sure maxim that the stronger Parts of the Body empty their excrements into the weaker we may avouch that all the Parts aforesaid may discharge their excrements upon the Joynts if they being weakned cannot sufficiently resist the same And that the Opinions aforesaid may be severally refuted Fernelius indeed doth clearly enough demonstrate that Humors collected without the Soul do flow upon the surface of the body and under the Skin creep into the Joynts seeing somtimes the Pain begins in the Head goes thence into the Neck thence to the shoulders and at length into the Joints But that Humors do never flow from other places and Parts into the Joynts he no waies proves neither is any man able to prove after him In like manner they which say that such Fluxions come only from the brain seem to contend against sense Forasmuch as those Parts which compass the Joints about do receive Veins and arteries by which blood is brought unto them to nourish them withall why may not also the wheyish Humor collected in the greater vessells be carried unto the same Parts by the same waies Galen hath taught this precisely in his Comments upon the Aphor. 10. Sect. 3 where he shews that in the knobbs and Pains of the Joynts the profound Parts of the body are purged the vitious Humors being driven from the principal Parts of the body into the Circumference This is seen by the Feaver which is oftentimes raised in the beginning of the Gout for it is caused by wheyish excrements conteined in the Veins put into a commotion and working when nature sees her self to expell the same and seeing she cannot drive it all forth she discharges the same into the weaker and ignobler Parts Also the third Opinion which Sennertus defends is Void of reason and is herein faulty because it denies that Gouty defluxions do ever come from the brain For seeing all Parts of the Body both inward and outward do receive Fluxions from the Brain how can the Joynts be free from them And if Humors causing a Catarrh do often flow by the Veins and arteries whence Rhewmatick Feavers daily arise and the Humors conteined in the Veins and Arteries as Sennertus himself affirms do easily flow unto the Joynts it is a clear demonstration that a Fluxion is made from the brain into the Joynts Also plentyful Pissing declares that Humors flow from the brain through the Veins when the said Pissing is caused by some commotion of the brain by reason of long abiding in the Sun or in a very cold air for then the wheyish Humors conteined in the brain are agitated by those Procatarctick Causes and driven into the Veins and Arteries through which they flow unto the Kidney's and the Bladder and thence comes so plentiful making of water The next and immediate Internal Cause of the Gout hath hitherto bin sufficiently expounded now let us proceed to the external and Procatarctick Causes or occasions thereof which we may for clearness sake distinguish into three Tribes or Rankes The first Tribe is of them which afford matter convenient to breed the Gout The second is of those which do weaken and loosen the Joynts The third is of them which promote the flux of the Morbifick Humor into the Joints To the first Tribe are referred al things which encrease raw and wheyish Humors or any bad Humors whatsoever as meates of gross substance hard to be digested and such as afford many excrements frequent Gluttony and Drunkenness immoderate Carnal Embracements which is the reason that Gout is called the Daughter of Bacchus and Venus Idleness and a sedentary life and intermission of such exercises as men have been formerly accustomed unto long sleep and unseasonable watching intermission of such naturall and artificial Evacuations as men have been accustomed unto fear Sadness and continual Care To the second Tribe are referred vehement motion and Labour frequent use of carnall conjunction especially of that which is celebrated standing refrigeration and humectation of the Joints frequent Bathing Contusion Luxation and Fracture of the Joints To the third Tribe are referred Cold air squeezing out the Humors and Heat melting dissolving and agitating the said Humors and opening the secret Passages meats of a servent and salt nature which attenuate the Humors thin and strong Wine Immoderate exercise unbridled Lechery vehement anger and other immoderate passions of the Mind The Signs do either foretell the Gout at Hand or declare the same to be present Signes of the Gout at Hand a Sence in the Joints more exquisite and quick than ordinary so that the lightest thing will hurt them as for example the hard sitting of a new Shoe Long walking a smal blow or a light hitting against a stone or some other hard thing A Feaver commonly ushers in the Gout which is caused by wheyish Humors and others conteined in the Veins and arteries being disturbed and agitated whiles nature endeavours to expell them to those less noble Parts But the neerer approach of the Gout and its beginning as it were is signified by a stupidity and sence of crawling Pismires in the Joynts and a kind of unusual Heat felt in them The Gout is known to be present by an actual pain tormenting the Joynts which commonly is attended with redness and swelling which if it appear not at the very first yet is it seen presently after The pain doth usually seize upon the great Toe especially on the left foot and oftentimes it spreads it self from thence into other Joynts The Feaver which comes before the pain doth somtimes continue and somtimes it goes not before but comes together with the pain The Signs of the Causes are likewise to be considered For although the Humor causing the Gout be principally wheyish yet is it needful to know what other Humors are mixed therewith that we may fit out Medicines thereunto And in the first place Choller abounding with the wheyish Humor is known by a vehement and cutting pain a smal swelling a reddish or palish color great heat and the Feaver intense and persevering in its state or height thin Urine yellow and riddish cold things help and hot things hurt Signs of flegm abounding with the Whey are a softish and somwhat loose swelling of the parts affected which if a man press with his finger there remains a pit the pain is not so great Urines are thick and troubled Cold things hurt and hot things help little or no heat is felt the color is white little differing from the Natural color of the part Signs of Melancholly abounding
the Caul or the Pancrea or other Parts or also somtimes when the Child or After-birth are corrupted in the Womb. And hence not only slow Feavers but somtimes also acute ones do arise according to the different Nature of the putrefactions And finally to this kind of slow Feavers those are to be referred which are found in Cachectical persons and in Maids which have the Green-Sickness which Fernelius conceives do arise from a light putrefaction of wheyish flegm shed abroad in the Body Besides these forenamed differences of continual Feavers which are most frequent and are commonly set down by Authors there are also some other arising from peculiar and extraordinary Causes which somtimes we meet with in our Practice The Case of a certain Infant may serve for example propounded by Zechius in his 46. Counsel The Infant was scarce two yeares old and had a continual Feaver with most greivous Symptomes viz. Unquietness convulsions and continual stomach Sickness enclining to Vomit and it was conjectured that there was some Malignity adjoyned because such greivous symptomes did not answer to that Feaver For al the external Parts were cold though the inner Parts were burned with heat as appeared by the heat about the brest and under the short Ribs and also from the dryness and blackness of the Tongue The Cause of which was blood putrifying conteined in the stomach For this Infant being tongue-tied was lately cut by a Chirurgion in which work some Veins or other was opened which shed some blood into the stomach which putrefying there by sending forth hot putrid and as it were poisonous Vapors into the heart and Brain was the Cause of al the symptomes aforesaid But how this cause was found out and removed it is worth the while here to recite out of the Story of Zechius So often quoth he as I diligently consider with my self how hard a thing it is to understand internal Diseases and thier causes I come easily to be of the mind that Hippocrates in his second Book of vulgar Diseases Sect. 4. did not without greatest premeditation leave in writing then in the Curing of all hidden Diseases the Physitian must diligently enquire the first assault of the Disease that is to say the first occasion of the Patients illness For of that for the most part depends the knowledg both of the Cause and Cure See an Example hereof This Disease of the Gentlemans Child was very acute and the Cause very hard to find had not I diligently asked of the Parents touching the conditions of the Child and the Nurse who told me that two daies before its being first ill a certain Chyrurgeon had cut the Membrane whereby the Tongue of it was fastened to the parts beneath it And when I again asked them if presently after this was done they had caused the Child to be held forward or if any blood had come out of its mouth they said no it was neither so held neither came any blood from the mouth of it Whereupon I presently conjectured that blood was fallen from the place cut into the Stomach and there putresied and was the cause of the Disease and symptomes aforesaid Neither did my Opinion deceive me for having given it Oyl of sweet Almonds to make it vomit it uttered a considerable quantity of clotted blood and matterish Also it voided with a Clyster many clodders of blood And presently by the blessing of God Almighty the Feaver was abated and all Symptomes began to cease Whereupon it fell greedily and lustily on sucking its Nurse and all the following night it slept quietly and was afterward perfectly well The Diagnostick Signs of putrid continual Feavers do some of them shew the continu'ty others the putrefaction and the rest the peculiar differences of them The continuity is easily known in that the Feavers is continual and hath no intermision The putrefaction is signified by a sharper heat than ordinary and more biting and by a sharp and biting Sooty vapor produced by the exhalation of putrid Humors The pulse is not only great and frequent and oftentimes unequal but it hath this peculiar property That the Systole is quicker than the Diastole because the Expulsion of Sooty Excrements is more necessary than refrigeration The Urins are in the beginning crude or very little digested The Exacerbations or fits keep their certain times which yet is not to be understood of the Feaver Synochus A cold shaking fit at the beginning of the Disease Hereunto are added various Symptomes commonly accompanying putrid Feavers as Ilness of stomach vomiting heaviness of the body pain of the head raving giddiness of the head hiccoughs anxiety heart-burning thirst roughness and blackness of the tongue stretching of the parts under the short ribs and the rest Before which preceded weariness without labor pursiness troubled sleeps watchings tension of the parts under the short ribs difficult breathing pain and pulsation of the head stomach-sickness want of Appetite plenty of stinking Excrements frequent yawnings and reachings or some of these But the peculiar Differences of continual putrid Feavers may be discerned by these Signs following A continual putrid Feaver called Synochus putrida hath the same signs which were propounded in Synocha simplici but more vehement for the heat is more sharp the watchings head-ach thirst disquiet and other Symptomes are more vehement also the pulse is unequal so that the Systole appears greater than the Diastole the Urines are crude red and thick The Signs of a Feaver from Choller are burning pain a pulse mighty frequent and swift a sharp Urine fiery in the beginning alwaies crude without Sediment Stomach-sickness Chollerick vomitings and Stools Chollerick much anxiety mighty thirst bitterness of the mouth driness and blackness of the tongue watchings raving and an ulcerous kind of weariness soregoing paleness of Face or a citrine Color youthful Age temperature hot and dry Summer season hot and dry Diet Chollerick Evacuations suppressed And a continual Tertian is distinguished from a Synochus biliosa or continent Feaver springing of Choller because it hath Exacerbations or fits every third day but the Synochus biliosa keeps stil one and the same tenor The Signs of a continual Quotidian are Heat at first rather vaporous than biting afterwards somwhat sharp but unequal because of the thickness of the Humor which is difficultly dissolved the Urines are at first white watry troubled afterward somwhat red and thick the Pulse is seldomer slower and less than in the rest of these Feavers thirst little or none seldom sweat unless there be salt flegm the Face of the Patient is somwhat bloat or blown up lax flaggy and as it were Lead colored Drowziness want of Appetite flegmatick Excretions a cold and moist Temperament old Age Winter Season Cold and Moist Diet Evacuations suppressed and a dayly Excretion of the Disease A continual Quartan is known by these Signs The Heat is less sharp than in Feavers of Choller yet sharper than in Feavers of Flegm likewise
by Alteratives and Dier For it somtimes falls out when there is some evil disposition of the Bowels causing a protraction of the Feaver that so long as Medicaments are given so long the Disease continues because that Nature is weakened Which afterwards Purgation being omitted gathers strength concocts the Cause of the Disease and being concocted expels the same But if a lingring Feaver arise from Obstructions as is often seen in Children frequent and very gentle Purging which draws away the Humors by little and little is wont to remove the Disease especially if the Purgation be compounded with Rhubarb which both opens obstructions and strengthens the bowels The Commendations whereof celebrated by Montanus in his tenth Counsel of Feavers is worthy to be set down in this place He setting down the Cure of a Boy that had a lingring Feaver arising from Obstructions Among other things I shall commend saith he one which I have by long Experience found never to fail viz. That he take every day the Infusion of Rhubarb in Endive Water For I never knew Feaver from Obstructions which was not cured by this Medicament provided it were constantly taken without weariness or giving over For I have somtimes seen most gross Humors impacted into the narrow passages of the Body and such Obstructions as by reason of the weakness of Natural heat could hardly be removed cured by Rhubarb My Course therefore hath been to take one pint of Endive Water and therein to infuse a dram of Rhubarb tied in a thin piece of Linnen Of which Infusion having lightly pressed out the Rhubarb I give four ounces in the morning and this is the Dose for Children Neither do I cease giging this Medicament until I see the Feaver and Obstructions wholly gone For they will doubtless be cured if all other things be rightly ordered and suitable to the Cure So far Montanus But we are wont ordinarily to use a Diet Drink made with Rhubarb which to such Children as are troubled with a lingring Feaver and Obstructions I am wont to give for their ordinary Drink with good success It is thus made Half a dram or a dram of Rhubarb according as the Child can endure the tast thereof grosly poudered and tied in a Rag is infused in two or three pints of smal Beer or Ale an whol day cold Of this the Child drinks for a month together or longer if the stubbornness of the Disease require the same Whereunto if the Feaver be very remiss and the Child flegmatick a little Wine or stronger Beer or Ale may somtimes be added to qualifie the unpleasing tast of the Rhubarb After Purgation of the Morbifick Matter Nature is for the most part accustomed in the declination of the Disease to purge away the reliques of the Matter offending by Urine which we may discern because the Urines are then more thick or more plentiful than ordinary which endeavor of Nature must be assisted by Diuretick Medicaments which are most temperate such as are Emulsions and the Openers formerly set down in Juleps or Broths whereunto if the Feaver be very gentle some Roots of Fennel and Parsley or Leaves of Wormwood may be added and that especially in Feavers of Flegm and continual Quotidians But if Nature do expel the Reliques of the Morbifick Matter to the habit of the Body Sudoroficks are to be used not those hot ones which are more properly called Sudoroficks but others more temperate which are the same in a manner with the Diureticks and being of an attenuating faculty do dispose the Humors in such sort as Nature may more easily expel them by what place or way soever she is most enclined Howbeit to these may be added Carduus Water Spirit of Vitriol and other things which shall be more fully described when we shall treat of Malignant Feavers Besides inward Medicaments divers things are also outwardly applied to temperate the Feaverish heat to confirm the strength of the principal parts or to open the Pores of the Skin and draw out the smoaky Vapors and Feaverish Heat viz. Epithems Liniments and other things to be applied unto the Region of the Heart Liver and other parts Which are invented to mitigate the Heat and are not to be applied save in the state or declination of the Disease when the Heat diffuseth it self to the exterior parts not in the beginning or augment while it resides yet about the bowels nor yet when the Crisis is at hand An Epithem to be applied to the Region of the Heart may be thus compounded Take the Waters of Bugloss Sorrel Water-lillies Roses of each three ounces Vinegar of Roses or juyce of Lemmons one ounce the Pouders of Diamargaritum frigidum and Triasantalon of each one dram Camphire and Saffron of each five grains mix all Make hereof an Epithem to applied warm with Scarlet Cloth For the more strengthening and to make it smel the sweeter ad three ounces of Orange flower Water and one dram of Confectio Alkermes Where we desire yet more potently to strengthen solid Epithems are applied unto the Heart made after this or the like manner Take Conserves of Bugloss and Roses of each one ounce Confectio Alkermes two drams Pouder of Diamargaritum frigidum one dram and an half With Juyce of Lemmons or Rose Water make a solid Epithem to be applied after the liquid one aforesaid Or one yet more Cordial may in form of a Liniment be thus made Take Confectio Alkermes and de Hyacintho of each three drams Pouder of Triasantalon and Diamargaritum frigidum of each two drams With Water of Roses make all into the form of a Liniment or Oyntment wherewith smear the Beâ—ion of the Heart Also to strengthen to and drive out the Sooty Vapours and the Feaverish heat young Pidgeons are very good being split through the Back bone and applied to the Region of the Heart which likewise are oftentimes sprinkled with cordial Pouders as Diamargaritum frigidum and Triasantalon Or before they be applied the Region of the Heart is smeared with Confectio Alkermes and the cordial Liniment aforesaid Also to the Liver Epithems are wont to be applied which are made commonly after this manner Take Waters of endive Cichory Sorrel and Roses of each three ounces Lettice Water two ounces Vinegar of Roses half an ounce Pouder of the Electuary Triasantalon one dram and an half Spodium half a dram Camphire ten grains Make of all an Epithem For to cool more powerfully an Epithem may somtimes be made of Juyces after this manner Take Juyce of Cichory and Endive of each half a pound Juyce of Lettice and Vinegar of Roses of each two ounces Pouder Triasantalon two drams Mix all and make thereof an Epithem Now it is very profitable to apply cooling Epithems not only to the Liver but to the whol Region of the Hypochondriaes for they do not only further Coction but also help the distemper of the bowels and hinder the principal Parts from a deadly Consumption The
Restorative Broths with Juyce of Pomegranates sowr Grapes Pouders of Corals Pearls shavings of Ivory Sanders or Baulaustians Juleps of the Waters of Roses Lettice Purslain with Syrup of Pomegranates dryed Roses or Quinces Conserved Electuaries of Conserve of Roses Corals Pearls Terra Sigillata pouders of Diamargaritum frigidum and such like AN APPENDIX In the Cure of most acute and pernicious Feavers one thing is diligently to be noted that such Feavers seldom happen without some inward and peculiar disorder and commonly Inflamations of some of the inward Bowels as Liver Spleen c. So that we must evermore be careful of the Parts under the short Ribs of the Head the Breast the Womb Reins and Bladder that by al means possible we may hunt out which of those is much out of order and as much as may be restore the same to its Natural Constitution Chap. 3. Of a Tertian Ague AN Ague or Intermittent Tertian Feaver is caused by an Excrementitious Chollerick Humor contained in the first Region of the Body and there putrefying A Tertian Ague is either Legitimate and Exquisite or Illegitimate and bastard A Legitimate or Exquisite Tertian Ague is terminated in twelve hours and is caused by the putrefaction of Natural Choller But a bastard Tertian hath fits that last above twelve hours But if it exceed twenty four hours it is termed Tertiana extensa a stretched Tertian And it is caused either by Preternatural Coller putrefying or by Natural Choller mingled with other Humors especially with flegm Also Tertian Agues are Simple or Double or Triple A Simple Tertian is that whose Fits come every other day A Double Tertian is that whose Fits come every day And although herein it differ not from a Quotidian or every day Ague yet they are known one from the other by their proper Signs shewing the abundance of Flegm or Choller in the Patient of which Signs in their place Somtimes notwithstanding in a double Tertian there are two fits in one day the other day remaining free and this some latter Physitians do call two Tertians and make it to differ from a double Tertian Which Distinction notwithstanding is of smal moment A Triple Tertian is when there are three fits in the compass of two daies This is a most rare and seldom seen sort of Feavers Yet Galen propounds one single Example thereof and I saw another in the yeer 1637. in a certain Gentleman who once in sixteen hours had a fit of a Tertian Ague And all the fits did every one of them terminate in the space of ten or twelve hours by sweat Now these divers Paroxysms are made by a different matter putresying in different places so that each one hath as it were its peculiar Chimney where it is first kindled Now the Humors causing Tertian Agues are collected chiefly in the first Region of the Body viz. In the Liver the bladder of Gall the Stomach the Mesentery the Pancreas or in the Veins of those Parts Their Causes are all such things which ingender Excrementitious Choller viz. An hot and dry distemper of the Spleen youthful Age Hot Constitution of the Air Watchings Cares Anger Fastings use of hot Meats over much Exercise To these are added for the breeding a bastard Tertian such Causes as engender Flegm and Melancholly Hereupon such as have hot Livers and by Glutinous and bad Diet do breed many Crudities are subject to bastard Tertians by reason of the mixture of Choller with crude Humors And hence also it is that in Summer time crude Humors bred through weakness of the Natural Heat by eating of Fruits and over much drinking being mixed with Choller do breed bastard Tertians The Signs to know an Exquisite Tertian by are these That this Feaver alwaies begins with great shaking Fits whereas in a Quotidian Feaver or Ague there is only a light shivering or coldness After the cold shaking Fit follows great Heat sharp and biting Intollerable Thirst great and frequent breathing want of Sleep Head-ach and somtimes Ravings After the shaking fit somtimes there follows a vomiting of Chollerick Humors or a purging by Stool The Urine is somtimes Yellow Yellowish-Red or Red. The Fits last not above twelve hours and they are terminated by Sweat Also the Causes fore-cited breeding Choller have preceded In a bastard Tertian all the foregoing Signs are more remiss than they are in an Exquisite one but more intense than in a Quotidian Ague And according as there is more or less flegm mingled with the Choller the Fits come neerer to those of an Exquisite Tertian or of a Quotidian but in respect of the vehemency of the Symptoms and the length of the Fit it self So that the Paroxysms of a bastard Tertian may be lengthened out to sixteen eighteen or more hours Although they may be somtimes shorter because of the paucity of the Matter and be terminated within the space of eight ten or twelve hours The Prognostick of this Disease is taken out of Hippocrates in Sect. 4. Aph. 59. Exquisite or exact Tertian Agues last but for seven fits at most And in Aphor. 43. of the same Section All Intermitting Feavers are void of danger Which is to be understood only of such Tertians as are void of all malignity For there are Malignant and Pestilent Tertians which though they have evident Intermissions yet do they often kill the Patients Furthermore many things fall upon the Neck of a Tertian which may breed danger although the Feaver of it self be not dangerous Haly writes and common Experience shews That if such as are sick of a Tertian Ague have Ulcers Scabs or Pustles breaking out in their Lips it is a token the Ague wil leave them For it is a kind of Critical Evacuation in those parts A Loosness befalling one that hath a Tertian Ague the matter being digested ends the Disease And this is the way by which alone Nature doth perfectly expel the Cause of these Feavers For seeing the Original Cause of these Feavers is contained in the Gall-Bladder or the Liver or the Mesentery and other Parts in the first Region of the Body although that which steems and vapors therefrom in every fit do get into the habit of the Body and is purged away either by Sweats or by insensible Transpiration or by Pushes and Pimples yet the gross parts and setlings of the Humor abiding in their place which unless by the benefit of Nature or Medicaments it be purged away by stool it is wont to be the Cause either of a long Ague or of Obstructions or of a Relapse or of other stubborn Diseases Agues are wont to be of smal durance and little danger if the habit of the whol Body be good if the bowels be wel affected if it be Spring or Summer if the Patient eat little and drink sparingly And contrary wise they are wont to be long and more rebellious if there be an evil disposition of the Liver or Spleen if the Patient abound with flegmatick Humors or
Double Tertian Now these Double and Triple Quartans come of Melancholly putrefying in divers parts of the Body The Signs to know this Ague by are first such things as argue that Melancholly abounds in the Patient Unto which must be added the coming of the Fit upon the fourth day which is the peculiar sign Also the form of the fit differing from the fits of other Agues doth discover this Disease For it begins with yawning and stretchings together with heaviness of the whol Body after which follows cold and then shivering and shaking in which the Patients seem to have their bones broken Also the heat is kindled by little and little in a cold and thick Matter The Pulse is seldomer and slower than in other Feavers The Urines are at first white thin and watry but in the progress they are more colored and thicker Now these signs appear in a legitimate Quartan But in a bastard Quartan the vehemence of the Symptomes being greater doth argue the Humor to be thinner and hotter But a bastard Quartan is not distinguished from a legitimate herein alone in that in a bastard Quartan the heat thirst watchings and other Symptoms are more vehement but in that the legitimate begins of it self without any Feaver foregoing but a bastard Quartan succeeds other Feavers and Agues by reason of the adustion of the Humor which caused those Diseases by means of which adustion it degenerates into Preternatural Melancholly A Double Quartan is easily known by the Course of the fits And a Triple Quartan is distinguished from a Double Tertian and a Quotidian not only by the Signs of Melancholly abounding and by the form of the Fits but also because it was first a Single or a Double Quartan before it came to be a Triple Quartan For very rarely or never doth a Quartan Ague begin with a Triple but a Simple or Double Quartan degenerates into a Triple As for what concerns the Prognostick this kind of Ague is wont to be longest of all others and that which begins in the fal of the leaf continues al Winter commonly and goeth not away til the Spring come Yea and some Quartans continue a yeer or yeers Summer Quartans are the shortest In al of them we must have a continual eye to the signs of concoction which signifie the solution of the disease to be at hand and with these for the patient to make black urine is a good token A legitimate Quartan is longer than a bastard Quartan because the former proceeds from a thicker the latter from a thinner Humor This kind of Ague is wont to be very safe from danger especially the legitimate being accompanied with no grievous affection of any of the bowels But the bastard Quartan is more dangerous and if the Liver Spleen or any other part be grievously damnified it degenerates into a Dropsie Aged persons above sixty years being taken with a Quartan Ague do for the most part dy of it because their naturall heat is too weak to overcome so contumacious an Humor An intermitting Quartan being changed into a continual is for the most part deadly Because that Feaver whose motion was outward is changed into one whose motion is inward Which mostly falls out in the Winter the cold meeting with the humours which were but outward and beating them back into the innermost Closets of the Body The which also come to pass by unseasonable use of sharp and vehement purges For thereby of simple Quartans double triple and continual are generated A Quartan Ague coming upon one that hath the falling sickness cures the same according to Hippocrates in the 70 Aphorism of the 5 Section Those that have Quartan Agues are not much troubled with Convulsions And if having first Convulsions a Quartan Ague follows they are freed from their Convulsions Now the reason which Galen in his Comment gives hereof is because the thick matter which caused the Convulsions is by the long heat of this Ague attenuated and digested Also by the shaking of the Body in the cold Fits the said Humor is more easily ejected We must also add that the evil Humors lurking in the Brain and other parts as also in the veins is transferred to the Hypochondria and more ignoble parts where the Melancholly Quartanary Humors are seated and so leaves the parts aforesaid A bloody flux coming upon a quartan Ague tends to health according to Hippocrates in the 48 Aphorism of the sixt section To such as are splenetick a Dysenterie is good Now in a quartan Ague commonly the Spleen is misaffected and a melancholly humor is common to a quartan Ague and a misaffected Spleen but this must be understood of a short dysenterie for a long one is wont to be mortal as we have it in the 43. Aphorism of the said section Such as being troubled with the Spleen have a flux of the Belly with pain if it turn into a long Dysenterie or Bloody flux they fall either into a Dropsie or a Lienterie and dy To bleed at the nose in a quartan Ague is a very bad sign Because the Humor which causes a quartan is too thick and too cold to be voided that way and because such bleeding is symptomatical and if it continue wil breed a dropsie it must presently be stopped by opening the basilica vein out of which the putrid blood may flow because the pure blood comes from the Nose The quartan Ague hath a double cure according to the two kinds thereof For the remedies used in a bastard quartan must be far different from those which are used in a legitimate one And that we may begin with a Legitimate quartan we must presently set our selves to vanquish the cause thereof not regarding the Feaver And seeing the cause thereof is an humor cold and dry thick and earthly we must use medicaments that do heat moisten and attenuate Also the Peccant Humor must be at seasonable times evacuated which notwithstanding will require a long time to do because of the extream contumacy of the Humor and length of the disease But before these medicines be used we must appoint the patient a convenient diet Let the patient therefore use meats of good juyce easy to digest of thin substance and moderately heating and moistening as the flesh of young Animals and mountain Birds new Egs soft boiled Fishes that are taken in stony Rivers In the state of the disease we may allow the patient Salt Fish Capars and Olives Galen 1. ad Glauco Grants likewise Pepper and Mustard Among Herbs Borrage is commended and Bugloss Pimpernel and Spinach Fennell and Parsly Roots but especailly Turneps which must be first boiled in water and afterwads in fat broath which is very good for such as have the quartan Crato in his Councels collected by Scholtzius brags that he had cured many of the quartan Ague by the second broath of turneps seasoned with Butter and Sugar Of fruits Apples and stewed Prunes Raisons of the Sun fat Figs Almonds
little but the malignant quality intense and then the Feaver in regard of putrefaction shews no such bad symptoms seems remiss yet the strength of the patient is more than ordinarily weakned For somtimes the putrefaction is so remiss that it is in a manner none at all but the malignant quality in a very high degree and then we have a Feaver which seems neither to the Patient nor by standers any thing troublesom but it seems at first sight mild as mild can be when as indeed and intruth it is very mortall for when the malignant qualitie is increased the patients strength is dejected and the Heart wholly overwhelmed and this kind of Feaver doth not only deceive the Patients and by-standers but somtimes the Physitians themselves are thereby cheated whiles there being no sign present either by crudity or pravity of Humors the Pulse being in a manner in it's natural state and the heat of the Body at first appearance seeming mild and gentle it leads unto destruction Som such thing is likewise wont to happen in the first difference viz. When it is joyned with the highest degree of malignity for putrefaction being by convenient medicaments subdued and the signes of recovery appearing death notwithstanding somtimes ensues by reason the malignant quality did remaine uncorrected And finally the differences of a Pestilent Feaver are taken from its adjuncts and they are very many and most evident for there is no evil symptom nor kind of deadly disease which is not somtimes joyned with this Feaver The symptomes are Head-ach Watchings Raveings Dead sleepes Thirst Stomach-Sickness and Vomiting want of Appetite Swooning Fainting Hiccoughing Unquietness Loosness Sweats and such like which are common also to other kind of Feavers But there is one Symptom proper and peculiar to a pestilential Feaver which doth not happen in other Feavers viz. Purple Specks or Spots on the whol Body but especially in the Loyns the breast and back like unto Flea-bitings for the most part which the Italian Physitians name Peticulae or Petechiae and these Feavers which have these Symptoms are commonly named Purpuratae or Petechialis Purple or Spotted Feavers For these Purple Spots do not appear in all Pestilential Feavers but when they appear they are a most certain Sign of a pestilential Feaver Now we call them Purple Spots because they are for the most part of a Purple colour Yet they are many times of a violet colour Green blewish or black and then they are far worse and do signifie greater Malignity And although these Spots are for the most part like Flea-biâ—ings yet they appear somwhat greater So as to represent those black and blew marks which remain after whipping and then they are worse And somtimes they are very large and possess whol Members and a great part of the body viz. the Arms Thighs and back and then the parts appear tainted with redness which in few hours oftentimes vanisheth away and then returns again as it were by Fits whilst the Feaver undergoes it's Fits or Exacerbations wherein the blood boiling doth send forth it 's thinner Exhalations to the surface of the Skin by which the Skin is not swelled but only infected with a red Color Oftentimes notwithstanding by these Ebullitions the Skin is in divers parts puffed up with a certain redness and makes certain broad and soft tumors in the Skin which in a few hours vanish away and are commonly called Ebullitions of the blood In these and the aforesaid there is alwaies some Malignity but so light that it threatens no danger unless in the progress of the Disease it prove more intense Now the Spots aforesaid like to Flea-bitings do differ from those Pushes which are wont also somtimes to appear in these Feavers and are mentioned by Hippocrates in Epidemiis which have an Head and are a kind of Tumors which come somtimes to Suppuration or Exulceration But the Purple Spots have as was said no eminence or Head and were unknown to the Antients being described only by later Physitians of after Ages As to those Diseases which are joyned to a Pestilential Feaver we may affirm what hath been said of the Sym ptoms viz. that many deadly Diseases are joyned with these Feavers namely Phrensies Squâ— iâ—es Pleurisies Inflamations of the Lungs Inflamations of the Liver bloody Fluxes and very many more But the chief Diseases which shew themselves in a Pestilential Feaver are two viz. a Pestilent Bubo and a Carbuncle which declare the venemous quality to be in the highest degree and are not found but in the true Pestilence and are wont commonly to accompany the same So that the common People call them by the very name of the Pestilence The Causes of Pestilential Feavers are some Internal others External and the Internal are some Immediate others Mediate The Immediate Cause of this Disease as we hinted before is a corruption of the Humors joyned with putrefaction From the Corruption they acquire an evil and venemous Quality and from Putrefaction the Feaver is bred The Mediate Causes are a Plethory Cacochymie and Obstructions Now we understand such a Plethory or fulness of Blood not as distends the Vessels but such at least as the strength of the Patient cannot master which not being regulated by Nature doth easily undergo Corruption and Putrefaction Now a Cacochymie or abundance of evil Humors is easily corrupted and putrefied Finally Obstructions are apt to breed all kind of Feavers forasmuch as Humors being close shut up in an hot and moist place wanting free transpiration do casily putrefie The Internal Mediate Causes are by Authors commonly called Morbosus Apparatus a sickly Disposition of Body and the efficacy thereof is so great that it alone is somtimes sufficient to produce a gentle Pestilential Feaver such as is commonly called a Malignant Feaver simply or a Purple Feaver without the Intervention of any External or common Cause For we oft-times see when the year is not Pestilential and there is no Epidemical sickness abroad some persons through the evil Condition of their Humors fall into such Feavers which are accompanied with many Symptoms of Malignancy yea and with other Purple spots Concerning the point of Obstruction we must observe that it doth necessarily concur as the principal Cause in Malignant Feavers which proceed from Internal Causes and are not Epidemical but that Epidemical Feavers which proceed from a common Cause viz. A Pestilent constitution of the Air or are gotten by Contagion have not necessarily any Obstructions for their Cause For the venemous quality is received only by breathing in the corrupt Air or only by Infection from others by which venemous Quality the Humors of the Body declining from their own proper Nature do of their own accord putrefie For even as Fruits that will not keep and other things apâ— to corrupt though they have never so much freedom of the Air yet cannot be preserved from Corruption Even so the Humors when they have conceived that pernitious Quality
an even balance out of which diversity of influences notwithstanding it could hardly come to pass but that som parcel of things so different should sometiems suffer not in any whol kind oâ— sort which should tend to the destruction of the universe but only in some individuals that were less able to resist and for the most part misaffecred and only in some part of the Air more disposed to receive malignant influences From whence we may conclude that those corruptions doe chiefly depend upon the defect of sublunary bodies forasmuch as many places are in the world where the air is so perfectly constituted and the inhabitants â—o evenly tempered that let never so malignant Influences of Starrs showâ— upon them yet are they never infected whith other pestilence To the same kind of Causes must we refer the Defects and Eclipses of Sun and Moon unusual Meteors and especially Blazing Stars which are never wont to appear but that Epidemical and Pestilential Sicknesses and Divers changes in the World do follow as is Consirmed by the experiments of many Histories whence that usually Cited verse of Claudian is become as a Proverb In Caelo nunquam Spectatum impune Cometam A blazing Star does not appear But some Beholders plagued are A most evident witnes whereof was that hairy Comet which appeared Anno 1618. Towards the East on the 27 of November and was afterwards seen near upon the whol Moneth of December moving and shining It 's thicker and more solid part being turned towards the Sun did behold the East and did far exceed Venus both in the clearnes of its shining and in its largnes thickly compacted and conglobated together The remaining part being more thin and less enlightened by the Sun because of its thinnes did move like fairly spred beard and stretched towards the West This Comet first appeared under the sign of Libra nere the Aequinoctial Line but by a private and peculiar motion of its own it was carryed from thence through the feet of Virgo the middle of Bootes and the tail of the greater Bear And at length its light decreasing by little and little and the matter whereof it consisted being dissipated it vanished betwen the great Bear and the Dragon It was carried with the common motion of the Stars from East to West but it seemed to be moved som what swifter than the Stars for in the first Daies of its Apparition it was wont to rise a little before five in the morning and afterwards it rose about four a Clock and before four and so sooner and sooner till it prevented the Midnight and Bed-time And we have reason to believe that this Comet was the Prognostick and sorerunner of malignant and pestilential Diseases and also of those Wars wherewith whole Europe in a manner hath since that time been laid Wast And although the Air be chief among the mediate Causes of malignant and pestilential Feavers yet sure enough other non-natural things do concur to their generation as I shall particularly and berifly declare The next to air are Aliments because bad Diet Causth a sickly disposition of the body which is an internal efficient and Causasine qua non or malignant and Pestilential Feavers Whereupon Galen in his Book De Cibis boni et mali Succi and in the 1. de Differ Feb. Chap. 3. Does demonstrate that from bad and corrupt Diet Pestilential Diseases do arise Now meats are said to be evil and the Causes of those diseases in many respects And in the first place when the Fruits of the Earth and of Trees by reason of a bad constitution of the year viz. Over moist or over dry or corrupted by mists or some tempestuous weather or some malignant influence of the stars do being eaten produce bad Juices in the body Secondly when there is great Famine and scarcity of Corn From whence came that Proverb Ho loimos meta limon the Plague follows famine For then the poor common People are forced to fill their bellies with such meats as are cheap and bad whence arises abundance of bad Humors And which is much worse when a plenty presently followes famine they do then suddenly cram themselves with much meat which by the languishing heat of their internal parts cannot be well digested and thereupon those meats come to participate of a malignant putrefaction Thirdly VVhen Aliments which in their own Nature are good do by some way or other gain putrefaction or some evil qualitie such are wheat barly beans and pease and other kind of grain which being either overlong kept or ill laid up in a moist place or otherwise misaffected do come to be musty or have some other putrefactive qualitie Such is flesh over long kept or stinking or such as is of beasts that were not killed but died of some disease as Julius Obsequens relates that in the Isle called Lipara when the Sea was made hot the fires which by meanes of an Earth-quake were forcibly vomited out of the Mount Aetina and had boiled the Fishes casting them upon the shoâ—â—â— the Inhabitants eating greedily of those Fishes a sore Pestilence followed Neither is there less power in drinks when putrid and corrupted wines or beer or other liquors are drunk or when water is drunk out of putrid and muddy Lakes or otherwaies infected As good Histories do â—â—stiâ—ie that numerous Armies have been destroied by pestilential Diseases with drinking such waters These non-natural things mentioned viz. Ayr and Meates and drinks have the greatest force to engender malignant Feavers but the four remaining viz. things voided or retained Motion and Rest Sleep and waking with Pamons of the Mind are of less efficacy and do only concur as adjuvaut Causes or such as dispose the body to conceive a malignant pucrefaction as in our exposition of them shal preâ—ently appâ—ar The â—â—tention of Courses in women or of some other accustomed evacuation Men as of the Hemorrhoides bleeâ—â—ing at nose and Loosenes which betides some persons at certain seasons when they happen in a pestilential year they are wont to produce a malignant disease For those things which are wont to be avoided as superfluous and burdensome to Nature if they be retained in the body they do easily conceive putrefaction so likewise over great evacuations either of blood or other humors do much weaken the Body and do Cause that Natural Heat being weakned it is soon infected by the vitious and pestilential impurities of the Air. As for motion and rest certain it is that overmuch Idleness is a Cause that Natural heat is not sufficiently eâ—entilated and consequently the Humors conceive putrefaction so over great exercise does very much open the pores and dissolves the Heat whereupon the body becoming weak and more apt to take impression does easily receive the Infection And too much sleep makes many Excrements and fils the body with Humidities which easily putrefie but too much watching does engender Crudities and they easily putresie because Natural Heat cannot wel
Neither must we therefore beleeve that Critical Sweats doth never any good in these Feavers For by how much less Venom there is in the Disease they do so much the more good as it happens in ordinary Feavers And we find by Observation that 't is far the better for the Patients to Sweat often at the beginning of the Disease provided they be not worse after their Sweats for 't is a sign that Nature doth attenuate the Matter by little and little and expel the same by Sweat Loosness of the Belly is a very uncertain sign For oftentimes a Loosness at the beginning of the Disease hath been good which yet experience shews is somtimes a deadly token Again after some Coction we have seen the Patient killed by a loosness and somtimes by the same recovered Yet we must thus distinguish When a venemous Quality hath the mastery the more the Matter goes away by Stool at the beginning of the Disease the less danger But when the Disease arises most part from putrefaction of the Humors they are worse that are loose at the beginning of the Disease Purple spots when they are many and large and of a benign color and break out Critically they foretel that Nature wil Conquer But if they be few smal of a bad color and are Symptomatically put forth they signifie that Nature is never worsted And further If they go in again it s the worst sign of all for it shews that the morbific Matters reflux into the inward parts Exanthemata or wheels appearing in divers parts of the Body are effects of greater malignity than Purple Spots and consequently portend greater danger Carbuncles and Buboes or risings in the Groin and some other parts doth witness greatest malignity and threaten most danger seeing they are wont to follow those Feavers whose peculiar Character it is that more die of them than recover Carbuncles Buboes by how much they are the further from the Heart grow faster and come quicker to ripen by so much the less dangerous are they But if Tumors encrease suddenly with bad Symptoms 't is ill Carbuncles very great of a filthy color with an eating Ulcer or which turn into a Grangrene are deadly as also those which are neer the Heart or rise upon the Throat Experience hath taught that many Carbuncles are more dangerous than few and contrarily many Buboes or other risings are more safe than few Perotides or risings behind the Ears in malignant and Purple Feavers are in the Augment and state deadly But if they appear when the Disease doth never so little decline and come to Suppuration they are a good token The Cure of a Pestilential Feaver is divided into two parts The first contains the preservation of those that have it not the second contains the healing of those that have it The preservation from the Pest consists chiefly in taking away of those Causes which make Bodies fit to receive the Pestilence and breed it in them And they are Internal or External the Internal are a Disposition of the Body apt thereto a Plethorie a Cachochimy and Obstructions The External are especially a vitiated Air and a wandring Contagion Bodies disposed to this Disease are such as either Naturally or Accidently are more moist than they ought to be Weak lax and rare dense and compact Moist bodies must be dryed drie must be preserved in that temper the former must avoid full diet much drinking and all moist nourishments such as are especially Fruits that wil not keep Hearbs Fishes Meats made of milk the South air such as comes from lakes and especially the air of the night Idlenes long Sleep especially Sleeping after dinners Batheings and whatever else can moisten the Body Let weak bodies be strengthened with a restorative diet and with strengthening medicaments Those of a rare lax and thin constitution need the same waies of prevention with the moist But the dense and compacted constitution because it is most of al disposed to a pestileâ—â—ial disease must more carefully be freed from a plethorie Cacochymie and from obstruction which causes seeing in all bodies they may breed this kind of Feaver as internall causes we mâ—st perpetually studie their removal A Plethory requires Phlebotimy provided nothing do advise the contrary as a very cold or hot season of the year and a pestilential Constitution of the Ayr in which a vein must not be opened unless a Plethora ad vasa do manifestly urge the same or some usual evacuations of blood by courses hemorrhoids or nose-bleeding have been stopped For the blood being exhaust the air which is breathed in will more easily imprint it's pestilential qualitie and in case the disease happen the Patient will the hardlier escape for being weakened by blood-leting even as they who drink poison after blood letting it penetrates the more and they are with more difficulty recovered Also when we fear poyson we let not the patient blood so Galen Lib. 7. de diff Feb. Cap. 4. Where he propoundes a preservation from a pestilential Feaver he prescribes indeed Purgation and opening of obstructions but he makes no mention of Phlebotomy To Cacochymy we must oppose purgeing such as is proper for the bumors offending convenient preparation being premised if it seem necessary with this caution that benign medicaments be only used abstaining from such as have a malignant and deadly qualitie with which it will be good to mix some Bezoarticks and such things as are Alexipharmical Obstructions are caused by the multitude of humors their thickness and clamminess The multitude will be helped by such urin as evacuates the thickness by such as attenuate the cla mminess by things that are abstersive or clensing In respect of externall causes Precaution must be made first by correcting the excesses of the air viz. By cooling that which is too hot as we taught in continual Feavers by drying that which is over moist with sires both in streets in private houses and that as much as may be made with sweet woods as Juniper Bayes Rosemary and such like Secondly by removing al the causes above recited which do infect the air Thirdly by consuming and dissipating the infections in the air which may be don by kindeling of fires as was said in correcting the moisture of the air and the perfumes of sweet smelling and Alexipharmical materials Also by vehement agitation of the ayr to which end the frequent discharging of great Guns will be very effectuall But if the ayr shal be very much infected so as therefrom a Feaver truly pestilential shal arise the best kind of preservative is to change the air and they that are forced to continue or to converse in places infected and among the sick have need of many other cautions and they must often use Antidotes All which are at large set down by such Authors as have treated expresly of the Plague and from thence the reader must fetch them because my design is but briefly to touch such things
Oyl of Nuts new drawn without fire mixed well with a like quantity of Rose-water till they come to the form of a Liniment is excellent for the same purpose If by neglecting the Remedies aforesaid or through the extream malignity of the Humor there remain Pits and Pock-holes all diligence must be used to repair the same Which notwithstanding is extream hard to do perfectly although many have taken great pains thereabout to gratifie Virgins and other Women who are exceeding careful to preserve their Beauties Among infinite Medicines recorded by Authors to this intent I shall propound the choisest And in the first place Oyl of Eg-yolks does nourish and engender Skin and therefore is very convenient to fill the Pock-holes Wethers Suet fresh and new melted and done out with a Fether is effectual to the same purpose But the filthyness of Pock-holes is much amended if they be washed first with Yarrow-Water or Cows-dung-water distilled in May and then anointed with Mans-Grease Forestus does much magnifie this following Oyntment Take Oyls of sweet Almonds and white Lillies of each one ounce Fat of a Capon three drams Pouder of Peony Roots of Orice and Lytharge of Gold of each ten grains Sugar-Candy one scruple Mingle al well in a warm Mortar strain them through a Cloth and noint the Pock-holes therewith morning and night And afterwards let them be well washed with Water distilled out of Calves-feet and when that is not at hand use the Water of Yarrow in stead thereof Neither must I omit that which many Practitioners do teach viz. That when the Pocks be ripe they must be bored through with a golden or a silver Needle least the Quittor tarrying long in them should leave holes in the part Which Practice is notwithstanding now in a manner grown out of use since Experience has taught that the Pocks being bored are longer in healing and doth longer hold their Crusts because of the Weakness of Natural Heat caused in the Part by boring whereby more deformed Scars are left behind And therefore it is better to abstain from this boring and to commit the evacuation of the Quittor to Nature alone To conclude this Cure I shall subjoyn how those dispositions of Itching and Exulceration which happen to persons that have the small Pocks may be remedied And in the first place When the small Pocks come forth or when they begin to ripen somtimes an huge pain or Itching does afflict the Patients especially in the Palms of the Hands and Soales of the Feet because the thickness of the Skin in those parts hinders the Eruption of the Pocks Which Symptom you shall help if you cause those parts to be held in hot Water or Foment them a long time with an Emollient Decoction But when there is great Itching in the Face which compels the Patients to scratch whence great deformity and foul Scars follow use this following Remedy Take leaves of Pellitory of the Wall one handful Flowers of Chamomel and Melilote of each half a pugil Boil them in a pint of Scabious Water To the strained Liquor ad three ounces of Honey-suckle Water With this Liquor hot often let the Itching Pocks be moistened by dipping a thin Rag or Cotton Wool therein and so applying the Liquor gently to them Now the Ulcers which arise from deep and malignant Pocks are to be cured with Vnguentum album Rhasis or with an Oyntment of Lead made after this manner Take Calcined Lead two ounces Litharge one ounce Ceruss washed and Vinegar of each half an ounce Oyl of Roses three ounces Honey of Roses one ounce Three Yolks of Egs Myrrh half an ounce Wax as much as shall suffice Make all into an Oyntment FINIS A PHYSICAL DICTIONARY Expounding such words as being terms of Art or otherwise derived from the Greek and Latin are dark to the English Reader This Dictionary is of use in the reading of all other Books of this Nature in the English Tongue LONDON Printed by Peter Cole in Leaden-Hall and are to be sold at his Shop at the sign of the Printing-press in Cornhil 1655. A Physical Dictionary A A Pophlegmatisms Medicines drawing flegm out of the Head Agaricktrochiscated See the London Dispensatory in English Apozeme A Medicine made of the Broth of divers Herbs and other Ingredients unto which somtimes certain Syrups are added Animal Faculties The Powers of Hearing Seeing Smelling Tasting Feeling of Imagination Understanding Memory Will Going Standing and all Voluntary Motion Aranea Tunica The Cobweb-Coat or Tunicle Abdomen The Belly or Paunch Apoplectick Water Good for the Apoplexy Autumn Harvest the Fall of the Leaf Actual Heat is Heat that may be felt by the hand such as is in Fire and all things heated thereby or in the Body of one in a Feaver It is oppoied to Potential Heat viz. That cannot be felt by the Hand as the Heat in pepper in Mustard seed in a Flint in unslaked Lime and the contrary of Actual Cold. Affected Troubled Diseased An Affect a Disease Trouble Disorder Aquae Acidulae The Spaw Waters like those of Epsam Barnet and Tunbridg with us Absurdities Unreasonable things Acrimony Sharpness such as in Mustard Pepper and in divers Humors of the Body which cause sickness Ascent Going up Apply lay on Actually Cold see Actual Heat Augment Encrease Accidentally By hap by chance upon occasion Adventitious not Natural but springing from external causes Actracting drawing together or causing Attracts draws to Accident somthing that happens upon a Disease vide Symptome Adstriction binding together shutting up Antecedent Cause foregoing Cause is opposed to the Conjunct Cause Abundance of Flegm in the Body is the Antecedent Cause of the Optick Nerves being stopped by flegm but the Flegm in the said Nerves is the Conjuct Cause c. of other Diseases Articulate Voyce A distinct Voyce such as that of Man-kind termed Speech Abstergent Clensing away filth Access Addition joyning to help or company Afflux flowing to Astringents Medicines that bind together and straiten the Pores and Passages of the Body Astriction binding knitting together Anodines Medicines which asswage pain Anastomosis an opening of the Mouths of Veins by which means Blood issues Astringe bind fasten close Acute sharp violent a Disease is termed Acute when it quickly changeth to health or death Adustion burning Adust burned Blood is said to be adust when by reason of extraordinary heat the thinner parts are evaporated and the thicker remain dreggy and black as if they were burnt Asthmatical troubled with shortness of breath Attest witness declare Aneurism a Swelling caused by a dilatation of the Arteries external Coat the internal being broken Axungia Grease Atrophy want of Nourishment when the Body pines away Attenuating Medicaments are such as make thick Humors thin Axiom or Theoreme an acknowledged undoubted Truth Adjacent lying neer bordering upon Aromatized Spiced perfumed Anus the Fundament Astringe to bind Atomes smal Moats hardly visible and that cannot admit of any division Adverse contrary to of
in them Carabe Amber Cronical Diseases such as usually last very long as Quartan Agues Stone Dropsies c. Crystal of Tartar Cream of Tartar Consistence Body or Substance Catheter an hollow Silver Instrument to thrust into the Bladder when the Urine is stopt by a stone to thrust back the stone and let out the Urine Complication of Diseases when divers Diseases are in the Body at the same time especially if they depend one upon another Coalition healing up growing together of a Wound or Ulcer or any Part that ought to be open as of the Privity in some Girls Coincide is to happen together at one and the same time Cachectical Persons are such as have their whol Bodies blown up with a soft and moist swelling with the color of the Face white or lead-colored Also their Legs especially swell and their Face is bloated Coindicants are divers things in a Disease or Patient which plead for one and the same Remedies So in a putrid Feaver the person being full bodied and the season warm also the person lusty and yong The Feaver the fulness of Blood in the Patient his Age and strength and Season of the Year are Coindicants that he must be let Blood Contra-indicants are divers considerations that disswade a Remedy As when in a putrid Feaver old Age Winter Season Weakness are Contra-indicants that disswade from Blood-letting which the Feaver simply considered doth indicate or perswade and hint out Coction of Humors is their being separated from the Mass of good Blood and fitted for expulsion As when thin Humors are moderately thickened and tough clammy Humors are cut and divided This Coction of Humors is known by the Urine when it hath a light even and smooth setling c. Causa sine qua non The Cause without which a thing cannot be though it be not the principal Cause thereof So a Taylors Shop-boord is a Cause sine qua non without which a Garment cannot be made though himself and the stuff the shape and the end be principal Causes Commemorative bringing to remembrance what is past Cicatrize is to bring unâ—o a Scar which is done when Wounds and Ulcers are healed up Contumacy stubbornness rebellion D DIureticks Provokers of Urine Diagnosis the knowledg of a Disease Distillation a flowing down of thin Humors from the Brain into several parts Decoction the Liquor where in things are boyled the Broth of Herbs and other Medicaments Diagnosticks the Signs to know what Disease a Patient hath Defluxion the same with Distillation also a running together of Humors into any part causing pain or swelling c. Delirium Dotage raving talking idlely in time of sickness especially Diarrhoea a simple Loosness without Inflamation of the Guts any extream pain or voiding of Blood Diaphoenicon see the London Dispensatory in English Diacatholicon Diacarthamum see the Dispensatory Diet this signifies in many places a Diet drink Diminished Lessened Diminution a lessening Discuss dispel invisibly as a Plaister that makes a swelling go away without breaking is said to discuss the same because the Matter of the swelling is not seen to come away but is turned into steems and vapors and partly drinks up the substance of the Plaister and so vanisheth invisibly Declination of a Disease is the breaking of the Disease when it begins to tend to health which is known by the Symptomes growing more gentle Diverting Medicines which turn aside the Humor causing the disease so that it flow not into the part offended Dislocation putting out of its place Derived turned away from Diffuse spread abroad Dâ—ssipated scattered abroad Demonstrated cleerly proved from undeniable Arguments Depravations marrings spoilings hurtings Depressed made flat or hollow dented in Distemper any excess of the four first qualities Heat Cold Moisture Dryness There are reckoned four simple or single distempers viz. a Hot a Cold a Moist a Dry and four compound viz. Hot and Moist Hot and Dry Cold and Moist Cold and Dry. Dilated widened Dilatation widening Debility weakness Distortion writhing wresting crooking Dissipating â—pread abroad driving away Derivations drawing an offensive Humor from the part diseased to some other part neer it Digestives Medicines which prepare evil Humors for to be driven out by Nature Dissolved melted consumed away It is used of swellings that are brought down by Oyntments or Plaisters and in other cases when the Humor causing the Disease is invisibly driven away The Drum mentioned in page 96. is a pretty little hollow bone in the Ear covered with a thin Skin like a Drum which being beaten upon by another little bone like a mallet doth cause sounds to be heard in the Ear. See Veslingus his Anatomy in English Diapedesis is an issuing of the blood through the Pores of the Veins The Day of Judgment or Critical day is that day in feavers especially wherein it appears on which side sentence is given whether on the â—lantifs viz. the Diseases or on Natures the Defendant so that by some Evacuation or swelling or other great mutation to the better or worse it appears whether the Patient is like to recover or not Distention stretching Depraved marred spoiled Dilatation widening opening Diaphragma the Midrif Dyspnaea shortness of breath Dysentery a Bloody-flux Diagrydiates Medicines that have Scammony or Diagry dium in them Dissolution of Natural Heat a decay of Natural Heat Diaphoretick Sweats which are caused by Nature oppressed with a malignant Humor and forcibly driving the same out by Sweat Dung-gate the Arse-hole Distillations by descent are when the Liquor which comes from the Materials stilled doth not rise up above the said Materials as in ordinary distillation but falls down under the Materials stilled which are therefore laid upon a Grace that the bottom of the Vessel may be empty and free to receive the distilled Liquor E EXcrement the Dregs of Digestion in the Body voided by Dung Urine and Sweat Evacuation an emptying or voiding forth purging Epispastick a Plaister to draw a Blister called also a Vesicatory or any strong drawing Plaister Errhines Medicinal Liquors to be snuft up thâ— Nostrils to purge the Brain Empyema Empyems a corrupt matter between the breast and the lungs following a Pleurisâ—e Erysipelas Oedematosum a tertian swelling arising from choller and flegm Eliphantiasis a leprous disease which makes the Patients skin like the Hide of an Elephant Electuary See the London Dispensatory Expulsion driving forth as of Excrements Dung Urine Sweat c. Expel to drive forth Eruption breaking forth Extinguished quenched put out Emunctuaries or Emunctoryes certain waies and passages that Nature finds to drive ill Humors into from the Principal Parts as certain Kernels behind the Ears and in the Groins under the Arm-pits c. where risings happened in time of Pestilence c. Essentially springing P. 11. that is primarily and principally not accidentally or occasionally Ebullition boiling and working of the blood in the Veins like New-wine in a Cask Extension stretching out Extenuation Leanness Consumption of flesh
let the Patient take it twice or thrice in a month The ordinary Pils mentioned in the Cure of the stoppage of the Liver are most excellent to which you may add the Medicines there mentioned of Tartar Vitriol and Steel Zacutus Lusitanus Observ 99. Lib. 2. reports of a certain Woman which had the Green-sickness ten yeers with stoppage of her Terms and could not be cured with divers opening and purging Medicines and some made of Steel that he cured her with nothing but Conserve of Mugwort given thirty daies together drinking after it the distilled Water of Savin in which Rhubarb had been a whol night insused The same Zacutus Observ 117. Lib. 3. tels of a Virgin which eating much Salt every day felinto a Diarrhoea of Choller mixed with a Consumption which he cured after general Medicines with Goats Milk steeled and cold things applied to the Liver In the greatest Obstructions an Issue made in the right or left Legg as the Liver or Spleen is affected is very good After the Obstructions are opened you must diseuss the flegm like serous humors that remain in the Veins and in the habit of the Body by sweats for which you must use the Decoction of Guajacum in cold Constitutions or of China and Sarsa in those that are hot for fifteen or twenty daies with this Caution That every fourth or fifth day you give a Purge to clense the Bowels of Humors which cannot be sent forth by sweat and which if they continue wil grow hard and putrefie and be the occasion of Feavers and other Diseases For this Purpose you may use Brimstone Baths both for drink and bathing for by the drinking thereof when the passages are first open by the Medicines aforesaid the Humor that is contained in the first and second Region of the Body is clensed and sent forth by the belly and urine and the third Region is clensed by sweating in them And lastly Copulation if it may be legally done after the use of opening Medicines is very good for thereby the Natural heat is stirred up in parts Natural by which the Vessels of the Womb are much enlarged And Experience teacheth that somtimes these Women have their Terms the first night after Marriage and that others who in good health have them before their accustomed time Chap. 2. Of the stoppage of the Terms THe Terms are said to be stopped when in a Woman ripe of Age which gives not suck and is not with Child there is a seldom smal or no evacuation of blood by the Womb which used to be every month The cause of this stoppage is either in the Womb or in its Vessels or in the blood which comes or ought to come that way Divers Diseases of the Womb may cause this Disease namely a cold Distemper and dry which thickeneth and bindeth the Body of the Womb or a hot and dry distemper by drying the part or burning up the nourishment thereof from whence come evil humors which being fastened in the part hinder the Terms from flowing Also the Organical Diseases of those parts as inflamation or scirrhus the turning of the inward mouth thereof or compression from the Tumors of the parts adjacent or the Omentum or Caul growing too thick The thickness of the Womb it self Ulcer or Scars which they leave or from the tearing of the Cotyledones or Mouths of the Vessels in a great Abortion The Vessels of the Womb do often suffer Obstruction which is the chief cause of stopping of the Terms and they come from cold and thick Humors somtimes there is a suppression of those Veins by binding of them and that is from the parts adjacent being stretched and swoln as we said in the binding or closing of the Womb. The blood offending either in quantity quality or motion may be cause of the obstruction of the Courses It offends in quantity when it is too much or too little too much when it stretcheth out the Veins so that they cannot contract themselves to expel it as in the bladder when it is too full of Urine it cannot contract it self to send it forth too little when the Body hath not blood enough to nourish it The blood offends in quality when it is thicker and more slimy of its own Nature by reason of the cold distemper of the Liver and other parts or from the mixture of thick and flegmatick or melanchollick humors from whence commonly Obstructions come The blood offends in motion when it passeth other waies as by the Nose vomiting spittle urine hemorrhoids and many other parts I saw a Maid who had a Sore in her head which opened every month and bled plentifully and we have seen many that have sent forth blood at fixed times by their Lungs and this evacuation was instead of a Menstrual flux The external Causes are cold and dry Air Northern winds often going into cold water especially in the time of their flux too little or two much meat either too thick and cold or too astringent also hot things as too much Salt and Spice by drying of the substance of the Liver and other parts and by drying up the blood by which it groweth thick and fit to stop violent exercise and watchings which do consume the blood long sleep and idleness which do weaken the Natural heat and cause Crudities too long retaining of Excrements by usual bleeding at the Nose Hemorrhoids Diarrhoea and other evacuations by vomit urine or sweat and lastly great passions of the mind anger sudden fear sorrow jealousie and the like The Knowledge of this is to be taken from the Patients relation but because it comes either from Natural or Preternatural Causes we shal lay down some distinguishing signs left the Physitian be deceived by Women that would dissemble their being with Child and left he should rashly prescribe Medicines to provoke Terms to Women with Child First If they be with Child they have commonly their Natural Complexion but others are pale and ill colored Secondly The Symptomes which Women with Child have at the first do dayly decrease but in others stoppage of the Terms by how much the longer the Terms stop by so much the more the Symptomes encrease Thirdly In Women with Child after the third Month you may perceive the Scituation and Motion of the Infant by laying your hand upon the inferior Belly in others there is a Tumor to be felt but it is oedematous or flegmatick not hard neither is it proportionable to the Womb. Fourthly If a wise Midwife touch the inward Mouth of the Womb it will not be so close shut as in women with Child but rather hard and contracted and full of pain Fiftly Women with Child are commonly merry and little disturbed but when the Terms are otherwise stopped they are sad and sorrowful The Signs of the Causes are these The faults of the Womb which use to cause stoppage of the Terms shal be laid down in the following Chapters but the greatest
part of them is found out by touching seeing and relation of the Patients The Obstruction and straightness of the Vessels of the Womb are known by pain in the Loyns and parts adjacent especially in the time the Terms should flow and if any thing flow at that time it is slimy white and blackish Now the Diseases of the adjacent parts which may shut the mouth of the Womb or the Veins will appear by their proper signs You may know the abounding of blood in the Veins by the swelling of the Veins in the Thighs and Arms especially if the Woman be fleshy and red and have fed high You may suppose there is want of blood if the Woman be fat if she have had a long Feaver went before or loathing of meat The evil quality of the blood is known by the evil habit of the Body by the distemper of the Liver and other parts and especially by the blood it self if you can see some of it The preposterous motion of the blood when it flows another way is manifest of it self As to the Prognostick The stoppage of the Terms is very dangerous and many great diseases come thereof and some in the Womb it self as swellings imposthumes and Ulcers others in the whol Body and divers parts thereof as Feavers Obstructions evil Habits Loathing Dropsie Heart-ach Cough short Breathing Fainting sore Eyes Madness Melancholly Headach Joynt-gout and the like Hippocrates Lib. 1. of Womens Diseases hath shewed the encrease of Diseases from the stopping of the Terms in these words The third month after the stoppage of the Terms they begin to feel suffocations or shortness of breath with horrors heaviness of the Loyns and somtimes a Feaver But if it last long the Belly grows hard they piss much they loath meat and watch much they grate their Teeth in sleep and if they continue longer stopped the pains will be greater but in the sixth month that Disease which was formerly curable will be then incurable then she wil be troubled in mind and faint vomit flegm thirsty the Belly about the Privities will be pained there will be a Feaver and the Body bound and the Urine stopped the Back will ach and she will stammer Afterwards the Leggs Feet and Belly will swell and the Urine be red bloody and pain over all the Body especially the Neck and Back-bone and Groyns and so they die of a Dropsie Thus far Hippocrates But here is a doubt because the Author saith That in the sixt month the Disease is incurable when Experience teacheth the contrary and Hippocrates himself 4. Epid. reports that a Maid who had her Terms stopped for seven Yeers was restored to health by the return of them Hippocrates may be reconciled to himself by saying That after six months the Disease is incurable when the Terms are in the Body or Cavity of the Womb because there they putrefie and come to suppuration as in the After-birth or Blood retained But this is not to be understood of every Suppuration That Stoppage is least dangerous which comes from plenty of good Blood or fat bleeding or other Evacuations because those Causes may easily be removed That is harder to be cured which comes from heaviness of Humors Obstruction of Vessels or straitness because that stubborn Humor getting into the innermost passages cannot be got forth but by long pains and Medicines which Women are very unwilling to receive That stoppage which cometh from the distemper only of the Womb is worst because the part being hurt by propriety is hard to be cured by reason of the continual flux of Humors which the part is disposed to receive and therefore is called the Jakes of the whol Body The Cure of this Disease is divers according to the variety of the Causes And first if it come from too much blood you must abate the quantity by Phlebotomy in the Arm for if the lower veins should be first opened the blood would be drawn more to the Womb where it would make greater obstruction and distention of Vessels and break them or cause Inflamation of the Womb. After the Plethory or abundance of blood is taken away you must draw the blood down by opening the lower Veins about the time that the Patient used before to be clensed as also by Frictions Ligatures Cupping-glasses dry and with Scarrification These things done you must relax and soften the parts of the Womb with Fomentations and Baths and moistening Unguents which if they cannot master the Disease you may give Hysterical Purges and such as do properly provoke the Terms which we shal after descrhibe cusing the mildest If want of Blood be the cause as after long Feavers great Evacuations and Extenuation of the Body you must not provoke them till you have used Restoratives and blood be renewed and whatsoever is the cause of extenuation be removed which things being done the Terms do commonly flow of themselves which if they do not but Nature forgets her office you must open the inferior Veins and use the Medicines afore mentioned so that you take not away too much blood becaus the strength is little and lest the Patient fal into a Consumption But here you must diligently mark That every extenuation of the body doth not signifie want of blood but only after great evacuations consuming Causes for it comes to pass somtimes that the Terms stopt in the Veins get an evil quality which makes the blood unfit to nourish hence comes leanness although the Veins be filled with much bad blood and then large bleeding is very good as Galen confirms Comment 3. in Lib. 6. Epid. I saith he cured a Woman that had her Courses stopped eight months when she was lean by drawing much blood as also others But what happened to that famous Woman was remarkable I opened a Vein when other Physitians feared the success and were against me saying that it must hurt her not only because she was lean but also because she had no stomach to eat But these yong Physitians had a more Sophistical way to observe what happened to the Patients and to neglect the affects and Causes which are the ground of Cure I took to my best remembrance the first day a pint and an half of blood from the woman the next day one pint the third not above half a pint or eight ounces Thus Galen By which it is manifest That from lean women of this disease you may take a great quantity of blood although the women of our Age will not endure it The stoppage of the Courses comes from a preposterous motion of the blood when it is sent forth by the Nose Vomiting spitting or Hemorrhoids and the like The Cure is by repelling it from those parts and bringing it to the passage of the Womb. First while they bleed you must wash Arms Head and Face with cold Water and keep them from the use of those parts especially loud speaking then you must open a Vein beneath Two or three daies