Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	habit_n	moist_a	purgation_n	30	3	16.1842	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A91851	The universal body of physick in five books; comprehending the several treatises of nature, of diseases and their causes, of symptomes, of the preservation of health, and of cures. Written in Latine by that famous and learned doctor Laz. Riverius, counsellour and physician to the present King of France, and professor in the Vniversity of Montpelier. Exactly translated into English by VVilliam Carr practitioner in physick.; Institutiones medicae. English	Rivière, Lazare, 1589-1655.; Carr, William.	1657 (1657)	Wing R1567A; ESTC R230160	400,707	430

and by the state of the air In all purgation it is necessary that the strength of the patient should be very lusty or moderate The strength is something impaired by purging and therefore if it be very much weakned purging is not to be attempted Hot and dry bodies as also cold whether they be moister or dryer endure purgation very hardly hot and moist more easily Those which are endued with a hot and dry temperament by purgation may be easily heated rarifi'd and dry'd and also fall into convulsions if the purgation be overmuch Cold and moist and cold and dry have a faint heat and little spirits which are easily dissipated by purgation but hot and moist have a greater heat to resist the force of purging a thin tender and loose habit is easily dissolv'd but a fleshy and well compact tolerates purgation but a fat habit not so well Fat people are diligently to be distinguished from fleshy for although both may endure purgation yet much lesse the fat because they are colder and have lesse spirits and narrower vessels Boyes and old men require gentler medicines in their middle age more forcible Women with childe in the 4 5 and 6 moneth upon urgent necessity and with great caution may be purged This is to be taken from Hipp. Aph. 1. sect 4. and it agrees with reason For when nature stirred up by the purging medicine endeavours to expel the excrementitious humours and the disease it self it shakes the womb and expels the birth unlesse it stick very close but if when she is with childe she is troubled with a disease that requires purgation it must be used but with milde and gentle remedies and the more confidently in those moneths wherein the birth is more strongly bound to the womb which is in the 4 5 6. moneth For as Galen elegantly saith the adhering of the birth to the womb is like the hanging of the fruit upon the trees For the fruit at first is held on with more tender stalks and therefore more easily fall off when the wind shakes them but being grown bigger they are not so easily loosened from the boughs and again when they are ripe they fall of of themselves So the birth at the first beginnings of its formation and when it comes to perfection are more easily shaken forth but in the middle time they cling faster to the womb The particular nature of the patient is diligently to be observed for some are purged easily and plentifully by weaker medicines others are hardly moved by stronger Those who are accustomed to purgations more easily endure them but in those who are seldome or never purged we must proceed more cauriously In a hotter or colder air purgations are more difficult in a temperate more easie A hotter air weakens the strength and begets hot diseases and therefore admits not purging which impairs the strength Therefore saith Hipp. Aph. 5. sect in the dog-daies and before them 't is bad purging The cold condenses the humours and stops up the passages rendring the body lesse fluid which makes purging lesse successeful Therefore Hipp. Aph. 47. sect 6. saith that purging is better in the Spring then at any time of the year The quantity of the purge is shewn by the quantity of the vicious humour for it is all to be purged out that the body may be freed If the noxious humour be not wholly taken away the disease is not cured or if it appear cured it is subject to a relapse Therefore Hipp. Aph. 10. sect 2. Those things which are left in diseases cause relapses but if but a little portion of that humour be left by exquisite diet by nature and the natural heat it may at length perhaps be overcome A small Cacochymie may be drawn all away at one time if the strength be vigorous and the matter be concocted and thin but if the strength be impaired both a small and great Cacochymie is to be drawn out by degrees This Theorem is confirmed by that of Hipp. Aph. 36. sect 2. Those that eat bad meat if they purge they lose their strength thereby The reason is because they abound with many and vicious humours and have little good juice so that their weak strength is much wasted by a strong medicament and then that sink of ill humours being mov'd by the purging medicins sends stinking and ill vapours to the heart stomack and brain which do cause swounings giddinesse and other accidents yet these humours are not to be left in the body but to be purged out by degrees and at several intervals of time and by Epicrasis without much agitation The most fit time for purgation is at the height or declination of the disease in which the humours are concocted and prepared for evacuation This rule is founded on Hipp. Aph. 21. sect 1. Physical cures belong to concected not to crude things But in the declination of the disease or at least at the end of the height thereof they are perfectly concocted This Theorem is to be limited with this restriction viz. if nature do not perform evacuation of it self For when the humours are critically evacuated there must be then no purgation unlesse the crisis be imperfect For then the reliques of the morbifical matter are to be drawn forth by medicines lest they breed a relapse At the beginning of diseases purgation is to be used if the humour be too superfluous and swell The humours are then said to swell when they are agitated with violence and provoke and pain the body But this swelling is proper to cholerick humours which are hot thin and acrimonious and most subject to breed acute diseases But thick and cold humours which generate long diseases are not wont to swell so much If therefore such humours swell it is lawful to purge them forth before they are concocted for it is to be fear'd that the strength may be impaired by the agitation of the matter and that the humours stirred up by that violence may fall upon some principal part but then those humours are easily purged although they be not concocted because being thin and movable nature being also excited by them and provoked by the purging medicins lends her helping hand to evacuate them her self So that the patient receives more good then harm by the purging away of those swelling humours before they are concocted Whence Hipp. Aph. 10. sect 4. It is good to administer cure in acute diseases if the matter swell the same day for to delay longer in such diseases is evil but this is to be performed with caution and premeditation for the most part the matter swels not as in Aph. 22. sect 1. and as the same Hipp. teaches in Aph. 24. sect 1. In acute diseases and at the beginning seldome use purgations but with premeditation for purgations by their heat and acrimony increase acute diseases and acute diseases are sooner wasted by a critical evacuation then by purging But those Crises are not rashly

duly perform its action unless it first rightly conform and especially acquire a proper figure so for instance the head ought to be round the arm long and so forth Besides the parts for the discharge of their offices must have certain passages and cavities so the veins and arteries have their passages the ventricle useth the passage of the Esophagus but the cavity is all that space which contains the aliment Thirdly some parts for their more convenient operation ought to be smooth as the aspera arteria whose interior superficies is smooth and polite for the sweeter modulation of the voyce for it is not termed rough as being unequal and rugged according to the usual acception of that term but being made up of an unequal viz. cartilaginous and membranous substance But it is requisite some parts should be rough and rugged as the interior superficies of the ventricle that it may the better contain the aliment A certain and determinate magnitude also is proportioned to every member requisite to the exercise of its action So the Liver is bigger than the Heart the Brain than the Eye and so forth But one part of the same kind are sufficient for the exercise of certain actions for others many So for speech the tongue onely is requisite but to hold any thing many fingers are necessary Conjunction signifies two things viz. site and connexion So the liver is situated on the right hypocondrium but the milt in the left the intestines in the middle of the abdomen the wombe between the bladder and the intestinum rectum so the bones effect motion by their mutual connexion in the joynts on the contrary the lips and the eye-lids for the performance of their offices ought not to have any connexion but are open and separate But the organical parts are two the principal and the ignoble The principal are they which are without exception necessary for the conservation of the individual and are liberal in the distribution of faculty and spirit to the whole body And these are three the brain the heart and the liver There are in our bodies three faculties as we shall afterwards instance the animal vital and natural every of these keeps a peculiar court in peculiar members in which it is more glorious and majestical and from which in fellowship with the spirits which are also generated in it it flows into the whole body hence these parts are nobilitated with the title of Principal This is the ancient and customary tenent of School-Physicians which we propose for the sake of young Practitioners from which opinion in the Physical Schools it was a sin to dissent though it be inconsistent with the assertions of the Peripateticks who obtrude that the Soul with the train of all its faculties resides wholly in the whole and wholly in every part therefore there needs no influence of faculties they dwelling in every part and operating every where if they want not convenient instruments which caused Aristotle to say If the eye were placed in the foot the foot would see The ignoble are they which send forth no faculties nor spirits or which are the servants and vassals of the principall So the organs of the senses are framed for the sake of the brain onely so the lungs midriffe and arteries are designed to the temper and purgation of the heart so the ventricle intestines milt reins both bladders are made for the use of the liver To be short all the parts of the whole body are ignoble excepting the three principal parts mentioned Yet Galen in his Ars parva reckons the testicles among the principal parts because they are necessary for the conservation of the species We must therefore distinguish that in respect of the species they are principal parts not in relation to the individuum A COROLLARY THat which should here be discoursed of the substance temper figure situation action and use of every part is so accurately and perspicuously handled by the learned Laurentius in his Anatomical History that repetition will be superfluous Therefore thus much shall suffice to be spoken of the Parts The sixth Section of Physiology Of the Faculties and Functions The First CHAPTER Of the Nature of Faculties and Functions The Faculties and Functions depending upon the Soul as their first cause it will not be amiss to explain what the Soul is The Soul therefore is the substantial form of a living body by which we enjoy life sense nutrition understanding and local motion ARistotle defines it the perfection or act of an organical body potentially living which definition lies invelop'd in obscure terms and is a point of nice speculation We therefore suppose this our definition to be more clear and more convenient for our conduct in the course of Physick for man being constituted of matter and form as all other natural bodies and all his parts being the matter it is consequent that the soul should be the form For all actions having a dependency upon the form and the soul being the cause and principle of all the actions of a living body we must necessarily acknowledg that the soul is the form Hence in the absence of the soul action ceaseth By this means we arrive at the knowledg of her by her actions onely because immaterial substances are understood only by their effects But these various actions are exercised by the soul through the help of divers vertues and proprieties which are the immediate retainers to its Essence and immediately depend upon it and these proprieties are termed faculties of which we institute our following discourse A Faculty is a proper and inseparable accident of the soul which is instrumental to it in the execution of certain Functions in the body The faculties are accidents referred to the second species of quality Their subject is the soul in which they inhere not as common but as proper and inseparable accidents hence Fernelius weakly asserts them separable from the soul which he endeavours to verify by an instance of the auctive faculty which he affirms to be abolished when the vigor of Age declines Yet this faculty is not abolished but only lies idle for want of Instruments for the whole Aliment is wasted in nutrition because the body being well grown requires more nutriment and innate heat being debilitated cannot operate accretion of which nature also is unmindful while it hath filled the body to its due proportion yet this faculty is not extinct as neither the procreating faculty in a Child though it is quiet without wantonizing till Youth when it finds the seed elaborated to maturity fit for the exercise of its functions A Function is an Active motion or the effect of a Faculty in any part of the body As the faculties wait immediately upon the form or the soul so the functions upon the faculties as effects depend upon their causes But in this lies the distinction between the actions and faculties that they are appropriated to the soul the functions to

incomprehensible by sense which yet our mind knows to be certainly true This is the head of all sciences which by the efficacious vertue of this faculty are usually learned and taught Memory is that operation of the soul which retains and preserves the received species of things The species of things when they are once hedged in to the mind are there long detained so that after a large space of time when they have been entertained by the senses they are represented to the mind and imagination This caused the invention of a third faculty distinct from the rest which might preserve all those species as a treasury out of which they may be fetched as occasion serves The Philosophers create another operation different from the memory viz. reminiscency which summons up those things that are run away from the memory rallying them together by the help of those which are yet retained But yet we are inclinable to assert with Galen that reminiscency is an operation of the memory reflecting upon it self For it is not as some conceive the only business of the memory to retain the species for by this means it would be a vertue not knowing but only lodging the species but it is the office of the memory to record things as they are transacted and so reminiscence is a progressive motion not a differing action of the memory A COROLLARY A notable question is usually debated among Physicians whether the principal faculties are locally distinguished in the brain in which for satisfaction I referre you to Laurentius by whom quest 2. book 10. it is admirably well handled CHAP. VIII Of Sleeping and Waking To the internal functions of the Brain are referred Sleeping and Waking we must therefore now treat of them ALL the Philosophers referre Sleeping and Waking to the common sense Positively asserting sleep to be the cessation of the common and exterior senses but watching to be the action and exercitation of them Hence when wee comprehend the common sense under imagination when also dreams of which we shall after treat may be circled into imagination strictly accepted therefore this place will be convenient for this Treatise But Sleep is a quietation or cessation of the internal and external senses appointed for the recreation of the body Watch is nothing else but the free exercise of the same senses By the Interior senses we chiefly understand that internal action by the help of which the species are received which by the external senses are conducted to the imagination for that operation sleeps with us but not the action of imagination ratiocination or memory which are not seldome exercised in sleep Nay the senses themselves do not wholly compose themselves to cessation for in sleep we receive violent objects as noyses ratlings and such like and so though sleep be called a privation and watching an habit yet it is no total privation but such an one which easily gives way to a retreat from it self to the habit and by this means it comes short of the essence of true privation The next and immediate cause of sleep is the locking up of the spirits and prohibition of their influence into the instruments of sense and motion But the influence of the spirits is block'd up by swarmes of vapors suffocating the brain which barricadoe the passages thereof The cause of natural and quiet sleep is a gentle and as it were roride vapour exhaling from the aliments into the brain stopping up the ventricles and passages of it for the retention of the spirits and quietation of animal actions But that sleep is induced by such like vapors mounting into the brain it is evident because the copiousness of meat and drink wine especially casts us into a long and deep sleep but these send up many vapors into the brain But they who are very sober and fast sleep little by reason of the paucity of vapors making to the brain which are soon dissipated for the sleep ceaseth when the native heat hath dispersed those vapors For those things stop the influence of the spirits which either much dissipate or dull them or any other way fix them The principal cause of sleep prohibiting the influx of the spirits is the plenty of vapors randezvouzing in the brain Yet there may be afforded many other causes producing the same with less efficacy or at least not so naturally for instance when the animal spirits are so tyred by the labour of the day more serious thoughts of the mind studies and cares so that all their forces rallyed together will not be able to effect an ordinary influx but nature retains them and the influent heat to repair the loss of the spirits So also cold things taken or applyed intercept and solidate the spirits as it were to a congelation And the spirits do not seldome make a stop at such things as delight the mind as pleasant Songs the allusion of bubbling waters an intermission of cogitations security of the mind and such like Lastly the end of sleep is the instauration of the animal strength and of the whole body The chief designe of sleep is to restore the animal powers to their vigour because they being over-wrought by a tedious and various sensation are by the help of sleep enlivened and the spirits exhausted by watching are strengthned the members wearied with motion return to their former nature and functions Secondarily also sleep conduceth to the better effecting of natural actions which by animal operations are in watching in a manner hindred For in the time we repose our selves to sleep the heat retires to the inner parts which is advantagious to concoction and now new matter is afforded for generation of spirits the excrements are mitigated diminished and better concocted CHAP. IX Of Dreams A Dream is a glancing apparition of some sensible thing represented to an animal in the time of sleep WHile an animal wakes and exercises the external senses representations from sensible objects are conveyed to the brain that there being imprinted by the virtue of the animal spirits they might be preserved When therefore this animal sleeps and releases to his external senses then these representations unless the animal spirits be obscured and obliterated with some dregs or disturbance of violent motion do again present themselves and appear in sleep This is the cause that the animal judgeth it self really to know by the outward senses those things which are objected onely in shadow Dreams usually visit us in the morning because then after perfect digestion the animal spirit is more pure the crass vapors being resolved and dispelled by native heat now therefore the species of things are presented and stated before the imagination more clearly and perfectly for as in troubled waters we perceive either none or a very uncomely effigies so the brain muddied with such plenty of vapors gives place to the effigiating of no dreams or of very confused and broken ones But Dreams are either supernatural or natural Supernatural

by the bad humours retain'd causes very great diseases as Pleuresies Peripneumonies putrid Feavers c. but being according to nature it preserves the body in health Here we must observe what Sanctorius hath said of insensible transpiration l. de stat Med. where he affirms that more excrements are voided by insensible transpiration then by all other evacuations taken together which no Physitians till then ever knew yet this he saith he hath found by the experience of thirty years in several bodies exactly weighed both before and after meat and after voiding of their excrements which are all to be seen in the Author or in Sennertus in his Theory of putrid Feavers The flux of the Flowres ought to be moderate according to the temper and custome of the woman observing certain intervals and certain periods Otherwise being suppressed or immederately flowing they are the cause of many diseases To the excretion of seed is referred the use of Venery which if it be moderate offends not the health though a man may want it without hurt as experience teaches in Monks and Batchelors For in those the seminal matter is transmitted to several parts and consum'd in the nourishment of them but the seminal parts dry and are made incapable of their function The immoderate use of Venery hurts men more then women dissolves the spirits refrigerates the body weakens the brain eyes nerves stomack and joynts duls the senses and begets crudities and stinking breath The fittest age for Venery is youth and middle age it is hurtful to others especially old men and men of dry and weak constitutions Such intervals are to be observed as Galen teaches that a man may seem more light and nimble then before The Spring is a fitter time for Venery then the Winter Autumn lesse and least of all the Summer at which time it is better to abstain As to the parts of the day Venery is most usefull in the morning or after a mans first sleep the concoction perfected and not after meat 'T is most hurtful after hard drinking strong exercises in time of famine or after long evacuations CHAP. XXX Of the Passions of the Minde THE Passions of the Minde have a great influence upon the whole constitution of the body so that not only extreme sicknesse but death also sometimes happens from the immoderate excesse of them being moderate they preserve health He therefore that labours to preserve his health ought to seek tranquillity of minde and resist vehement passion For so the body is preserved in its natural state and the passions cause no change in it But because it is impossible to be free from all the passions a man must labour to resist them with all his force and to bridle their violence Now the effects of these passions or of the chief of them we shall briefly lay down Moderate joy chiefly conduces of all the other affections to the preservation of health for by that the heat spirits and bloud are diffused to the whole body exciting the vigour of the faculties nourishing and moistening the habit thereof and gracing it with a lively colour Hence that of the Wise man A cheerful heart makes age youthful But immoderate joy dissipates the substance of the spirits dissolves the strength of the vital faculties whence proceed convulsions and sudden death oft-times especially in old people women and weak constitutions Sadnesse weakens the natural heat cools and dries the body makes the face pale lessens the pulse and by a straightning of the heart oft times causes Feavers hindring the dilation thereof whence arises putrefaction in the humours Avicen l. de vir Cor. c. 6. saith that two things do proceed from sadnesse a weaknesse of the natural faculty through an extinction of the heat and a thickning of the spirits and humours through cold which increases the melancholy humour Fear cals the heat suddenly to the heart which causes the outward parts to wax pale cold and tremble the teeth to chatter an interrupted speech and decay of the strength sometimes it loosens the belly and causes an ejection of urine a weaknesse and resolution of the muscles death sometimes ensues abundance of bloud being call'd to the heart by which it is oppressed and the vital faculty extinguished Anger vehemently stirs the heat and spirits increases and quickens the pulse whets the choler and increases quotidian and putrefi'd Feavers If it be too outragious it overcomes the reason and moves it from its seat It profits cold natures for it excites the weaker heat and enlivens it THE FIFTH BOOK OF PHYSICAL INSTITUTIONS CONTAINING The Cure of Diseases THE PREFACE THE fifth part of Physick containing the Cure of Diseases is divided into two principal parts The first part contains the general Method of curing and proposes all the Rules necessary for the cure of diseases The second Discourses of the Materials necessary to fulfill those Rules Therefore this fifth Book shall contain the general Method of Curing and the second shall set down the Physitians Rules and Materials The first part of the Cure of Diseases Of the general Method of Curing THE PROEME THE Method of Curing is by Authors said to be twofold General and Particular The general Method is that which delilivers the common Precepts which are for the curing of all sorts of Diseases and shewes what Remedies are proper for similar what for organick and what for common Diseases The particular Method shews how every Species of diseases is to be cured hapning to every part from the head to the foot which Method is observed in their works which they call Practick And this universal cure of particular Diseases depends upon the common Precepts which are set down in the general Method and is nothing else but a practise of the general Method upon all the several Species of Diseases and the several parts of the body Now because the dogmatical Method of Physick proceeds alwaies by way of Indication therefore this our Tractate shall comprehend four Sections The first shall be of the Method of Curing and their several Indications The second of the Indications from Causes The third of the Indications from Diseases And the last of Indications from the Strength And so there shall remain no Precept touching the cure of Diseases which shall remain unfolded SECTION I. Of the Method of Curing and the Indications CHAP. I. What is the Method of Curing what is Curation and what are the conditions of it THE Method of Curing is that part of Physick whereby helps are found by Indications to restore the lost health Curation is the change of the present vitious habit of the body into its natural habit Now the cure of a Disease ought to be speedily safely and with as much delight as may be to the Patient Between the Method of curing and the Cure of diseases there is little difference The Method of curing being nothing but a rational way which the Physitian observes in the cure of diseases And by

Of Medicaments altering black Choler BLack Choler is generated from adustion which makes it hot and dry and something thick so that the Medicaments which prepare it must be cold and moist and withall attenuating These are not much distinguished from those things that prepare yellow choler only that those are chosen which are more moist and therefore no sharp things are here used because they are thought to have a drying faculty Therefore those things which alter yellow choler may here be used yet properly and directly the following Medicaments are most convenient against black choler Simples Roots of Buglosse Borrage Liquorish Leaves of Borrage Buglosse Fumitory Hops Seeds the four great cold Seeds Fruits Fragrant Apples Flowers of Borrage Buglosse Violets Water-Lilly Compounds Waters of Borrage Buglosse Water-Lilly Syrups of Violets fragrant Apples Conserves of violets Borrage Buglosse Water-Lilly Lettice Chymicals Spirits of Sulphur Vitriol Sal prunellae Saturne Martis Tartar Cream of Tartar CHAP. VI. Of opening Medicines IN many passages of the body especially the veins of the Liver Mesentery and Womb obstructions are bred from thick and clammy humours which adhere to the tunicles of the vessels and hinder the passage of the other humours In cold natures sedentary people and such as use bad nourishment crude humours are generated which being carried to the narrow passages cannot by reason of their crassity passe through but are more and more thickned and become more clammy and glutinous sticking to the tunicles of the veins and begetting obstructions there which brings along with it infinite mischief But those obstructions are opened by aperative medicaments which according to Galen 5. de simpl med fac c. 11. are of a nitrous and bitter quality by the help of which quality they attenuate cut and cleanse and so are near a kin to those medicaments that prepare flegm Opening Medicaments are by Galen called purging and unstopping Medicaments with which faculty all those medicines are endued which are most necessary for the taking away of obstructions for by their attenuating quality they take away the thicknesse of the humour as they cut they take away the clamminesse which consists in the tenuity of the parts and as they cleanse they shake off the humour adhering to the parts Whatsoever therefore are truly and efficaciously opening must be of necessity hot yet cold opening things are given though of lesser vertue and lesse properly so called fit for slighter obstructions and hotter natures In putrid Feavers or otherwise hotter natures obstructions do often happen which unlesse they be very obstinate are to be taken away by cool openers or at least cool ones are to be mixed with the hotter which notwithstanding are not so absolutely cold as compared with others For of themselves they are either temperate or remisly cold for an open faculty cannot consist with an extreme coldnesse Those opening Medicaments are these Hot openers Simple Roots of Smallage Parsly Fennel Fern Cyperus Elecampane Gentian Eringos Cammock both Birthworts Asaraban Rinds of the roots of Cappers the middle rinde of Ash the middle rinde of Tamaris Leaves of Origan Calamint Penyroyal Germander ground Pine lesser Centaury Betony St. Johns Wort Wormwood Roman all the Maiden-hairs which are temperate Seeds of Smallage Parsly Fennel blessed Thistle Nettle Agnus castus Anise Carrots Siceli on Hartwort Ammi or Bishopsweed red Chiches Flowers of Stoechas Rosemary Broom Elder Tamaris Hysop Betony Gums Ammoniack Bdellium Aloes Turpentine Myrrhe Minerals Steel Compounds Waters of Fennel Betony Wormwood Hysop Carduus benedictus Cinnamon Syrups By Zantine of the five Roots of Wormwood simple Oxymel compound Oxymel Conserves of flowers of Broom Tamaris leaves of Wormwood Maidenhair roots of Elecampane Ginger Electuaries Aromaticum Rosatum Diarrhodon Abbatis Confections Alkermes Treacle Troches of Cappars Wormwood Eupatory Myrrhe Chymicals prepared Steel Salt of Wormwood Tamaris Ash-tree Tartar Cream of Tartar Oyl of Anise Fennel Cinnamon Spirit of Turpentine Cold openers Simple Roots of Succory Grasse Asparagus Sorrel Bruscus or Knee-holy sharp pointed Dock Leaves of Endive Succory Sowthistle Sorrel Liverwort Agrimony all the Maidenhairs Seeds the 4. greater cold ones Sorrel seeds Flowers of Succory Compounds Waters of Endive Succory Grasse Sorrel Agrimony Syrups of Vinacre simple of Limons of Succory simple of the juice of Sorrell of Maidenhair Electuaries Triasantalon Diarhodon Abbatis temperate Chymical Spirit of Sulphur Vitriol Sal Prunellae Cremor Tartari CHAP. VII Of purging Medicaments HItherto we have proposed those Medicaments which prepare noxious humours and make them fit for purgation now we treat of those medicines that purge them The humours are usually evacuated by such purging Medicines as having a familiarity with the substance of them draw the humours to them as the loadstone drawes iron Therefore there are so many sorts of purging medicines as there are sorts of humours in the body fit for purgation that is choler flegm melancholy and water The humours which are evacuated by the help of purging Medicaments are choler flegm melancholy and the serum or watry humour to every one of which there are peculiar remedies electively purging So those that purge choler are named Cholagogues flegm Phlegmagogues melancholy Melanagogues the serous humours Hydragogues These are again divided into milde moderate and vehement remedies All purging Medicaments work not with like force but some with lesse some with greater according to their various power of acting allowed them by nature and therefore that their vertues may be the easier drawn forth to use they are divided into three ranks milde moderate and vehement Milde Medicaments are commonly used in weak natures or where the first region is only to be evacuated Moderate in a moderate condition of the strength and to evacuate the second Region Lastly the most vehement in stronger bodies and when the humour is to be attracted from the remoter parts as the brain joints c. But commonly a wary Physician in the same medicament mingleth vehement with milde and moderate that they may work the more successefully together And for the better using of them the just dole of every one is to be propounded 'T is of very great moment rightly to understand the dose of every Medicament without which no man can make a medicine without the apparent endangering the life of the patient But because the dose of purging Medicines is to be changed according to the various disposition of the bodies which wholly depends upon the judgement of the Physician we will therefore propound a greater and lesse dose as they are used in a moderate age that from their latitude a convenient quantity may be discerned But those Doses are so to be taken according as the Medicaments are taken by themselves or as they say in their substance For in infusion there is used a double quantity of the vehement remedy in decoction a troble but those more milde and moderate are commonly trebled in the infusion and quadruple in the decoction The vertue of Medicaments is lost by infusion