De Medicina

29 Again, the bowels are moved by: leavened bread, and especially if it is the grey wheaten or barley bread, cabbage if lightly cooked, lettuce, dill, cress, basil, nettle-tops, purslane, radish, caper, garlic, onion, mallow, sorrel, beet, asparagus, gourds, cherries, mulberries, raisins preserved in jars, all ripe fruit, a fig even dried, but especially a green one, fresh grapes; fat small birds, snails, fish sauce, pickled fish, oysters, giant mussels, sea-urchins, sea-mussels, almost all shellfish, especially the soup made from them, rock fish and all soft fish, cuttlefish ink; any meat eaten when fat, either stewed or boiled, waterfowl, uncooked honey, milk, all things made with milk, mead, wine sweet or salted, soft water; all food sweetened, tepid, fatty, boiled, stewed, salted or watery.

30 On the contrary the bowels are confined: by bread made from siligo or simila flour, especially when unleavened, and particularly so when toasted, and this property is even increased by baking twice, porridge either from spelt or panic or millet, as well as gruel from the same, and especially if these have been parched beforehand; lentil porridge to which beet or endive or chicory or plantain has been added, and especially when these have been previously toasted, or endive by itself, or roasted with plantain, or chicory, the smaller pot-herbs, cabbage twice boiled; eggs rendered hard, especially by poaching; small birds, the blackbird and wood-pigeons especially when cooked in diluted vinegar, cranes, all birds which run rather than fly; the hare, wild she-goat, the liver of animals which yield suet,

31 The following increase the urine: garden herbs of good odour, as parsley, rue, dill, basil, mint, hyssop, anise, coriander, cress, rocket, fennel; and besides these asparagus, capers, catmint, thyme, savory, charlock, parsnip, especially growing wild, radish, skirret, onion; of game especially the hare; thin wine, pepper both round and long, mustard, wormwood, pine kernels.

32 For producing sleep the following are good: poppy, lettuce, and mostly the summer kinds in which the stalk is very milky, the mulberry, the leek. For exciting the senses: catmint, thyme, savory, hyssop, and especially pennyroyal, rue and onion.

33 For drawing out the material of the disease

Those which gently both repress and mollify at the same time are greasy wool to which has been added oil with vinegar or wine, crushed dates, bran boiled in salt water or vinegar.

But those which simultaneously repress and cool are pellitory, which the Greeks call parthenion or perdeikion, thyme, pennyroyal, basil, the blood-herb which the Greeks call polygonon, purslane, poppy-leaf, vine-tendril, coriander, hyocyamus-leaves, moss, skirret, parsley, solanum, which the Greeks call strychnos, cabbage-leaves, endive, plantain, fennel-seed; crushed pears and apples and especially quinces, lentils; cold water, especially rain water, wine and vinegar, and everything soaked in these, whether bread or meal or sponge or ashes, or greasy wool or even lint; Cimolian chalk, gypsum; oil perfumed with quince, myrtle, rose; unripe olive oil; vervains, the leaves crushed along with their young twigs, of which sort are the olive, cypress, myrtle, mastic, tamarisk, privet, rose, bramble, laurel, ivy, and pomegranate.

Those which repress without cooling are cooked

But those which are heating are poultices made of meal, whether of wheat or spelt or barley or bitter vetches or darnel or millet or panic or lentil or bean or lupin or linseed or fenugreek, when one of these has been boiled and applied hot. All forms of meal poultices, however, are rendered more efficacious by cooking in mead instead of in water. Besides there are: cyprus or iris oil, marrow, cat's fat, olive oil, especially if it is old, and there has been added to the oil salt, soda, black cummin, pepper, cinquefoil.

Generally those which are powerful to repress inflammation, and cool, harden the tissues; those which are heating, disperse inflammation and soften, and this last property belongs especially to plasters of linseed or fenugreek seeds.

But as regards all these medicaments, whether used as simples or in mixtures, their uses by medical men vary, so that it is clear that each man follows his own ideas rather than what he has found to be true by actual fact.

1 Having dealt with all that pertains to whole classes of diseases taken together, I come to the treatment of diseases one by one. Now the Greeks divided these into two species, terming some acute, others chronic. But because maladies did not always respond in the same way to treatment, some of the Greek writers have placed among the acute what others have placed among the chronic; from this it is clear that there are more than two classes. For some diseases are certainly of short duration, which carry off the patient quickly, or themselves come quickly to an end; some are chronic, in which neither recovery is near at hand nor death; and there is a third class, at one time acute, at another time chronic, and that occurs not only in fevers, where it is most frequent, but in other affections also. And besides the above there is a fourth class which cannot be said to be acute, because it is not fatal, nor really chronic, because if treated it is readily cured. When I come myself to speak of diseases singly, I will point out to which class each belongs. But I shall divide all diseases into those which appear to have their seat in the body as a whole, and into those which originate in particular parts. I shall begin with the former, after a few words of preface concerning all.

Whatever the malady luck no less than the art can claim influence for itself; seeing that with nature

There is another point which should be borne in mind, that the same remedies do not suit all patients. Hence it is that the highest authorities proclaim as if they were the only remedies, now some, now others, each in accordance with what he has found successful. It is well, then, when any one remedy fails, to look not so much to the authority as to the patient, and to make trial, now of one, now of another remedy, taking care, however, that in acute diseases what is doing no good is changed quickly; in chronic diseases which it takes time to produce as well as to remove, if a remedy does not succeed at once, it should not be condemned at once, much less should it be discontinued if it is beneficial, though only to a small extent, because the progress is completed by time.

2 Now at their commencements, it is easy to recognize at once what is an acute disease, and what a chronic one, not only as regards those which take a uniform course, but also when the course is variable. For when severe paroxysms and pains are causing

But as I commenced (II.2) with those symptoms which show some signs of impending illness, I shall make a beginning as to treatment by noticing the same period. If, therefore, any of the signs then referred to occur, the best treatment is rest and abstinence; if anything at all is to be drunk, let it be water, and it is sufficient for this to be continued sometimes for one day, sometimes, when alarming signs persist, for two days; on the day following the fast, food should be taken sparingly, and water drunk; the next day even wine, and then in turn, on alternate days, water and wine, until all anxiety is at an end. For often in this way a severe disease is dispersed while it is impending. And many deceive themselves with the hope of getting rid of the languor straightaway on the first day, either by exercise, or by a bath, or by a purge, or by an emetic, or by sweating, or by drinking wine: not but that such a procedure may succeed or not disappoint, but more often it fails, and abstinence by itself is a remedy without any risk; especially since it also admits of being modified in accordance with the degree of apprehension, and if the indications are of the slighter kind, it is enough to abstain from wine alone, its withdrawal being more advantageous than if something were subtracted from the food; if they are of somewhat greater severity, it is easy to limit the drink to water, and at

3 These then are the things to be done by those, who, being in health, have cause merely to be apprehensive. Now there follows the treatment of fevers, a class of disease which both affects the body as a whole, and is exceedingly common. Of fevers, one is quotidian, another tertian, a third quartan. At times certain fevers recur in even longer cycles, but that is seldom. In the former varieties both the diseases and their medicines are of various kinds.

Now quartan fevers have the simpler characteristics. Nearly always they begin with shivering, then heat breaks out, and the fever having ended, there are two days free; this on the fourth day it recurs.

But of tertian fevers there are two classes. The one, beginning and desisting in the same way as a quartan, has merely this distinction, that it affords one day free, and recurs on the third day. The other is far more pernicious; and it does indeed recur on the third day, yet out of forty-eight hours, about thirty-six, sometimes less, sometimes more, are in fact occupied by the paroxysm, nor does the fever entirely cease in the remission, but it only becomes less violent. This class most practitioners term hemitritaion.

Quotidian fevers, however, vary and have many