On Regimen In Acute Diseases   

thin, old, and strong wine; and you should give him oil, so that he
may settle, and have his bowels moved, when he will be relieved. He
must abstain from all other kinds of food; but when the pain remits,
give him asses milk to drink until he is purged. But if the bowels are
loose, with bilious discharges, tormina, vomitings, a feeling of
suffocation, and gnawing pains, it is best to enjoin repose, and to
drink hydromel, and avoid vomiting.
20. There are two kinds of dropsy, the one anasarca, which, when
formed, is incurable; the other is accompanied with emphysema
(tympanites?) and requires much good fortune to enable one to
triumph over it. Laborious exertion, fomentation, and abstinence
(are to be enjoined). The patient should eat dry and acrid things, for
thus will he pass the more water, and his strength be kept up. If he
labors under difficulty of breathing, if it is the summer season,
and if he is in the prime of life, and is strong, blood should be
abstracted from the arm, and then he should eat hot pieces of bread,
dipped in dark wine and oil, drink very little, and labor much, and
live on well-fed pork, boiled with vinegar, so that he may be able
to endure hard exercises.
21. Those who have the inferior intestines hot, and who pass acrid
and irregular stools of a colliquative nature, if they can bear it,
should procure revulsion by vomiting with hellebore; but if not,
should get a thick decoction of summer wheat in a cold state, lentil
soup, bread cooked with cinders, and fish, which should be taken
boiled if they have fever, but roasted if not feverish; and also
dark-colored wine if free of fever; but otherwise they should take the
water from medlars, myrtles, apples, services, dates, or wild vine. If
there be no fever, and if there be tormina, the patient should drink
hot asses' milk in small quantity at first, and gradually increase it,
and linseed, and wheaten flour, and having removed the bitter part
of Egyptian beans, and ground them, sprinkle on the milk and drink;
and let him eat eggs half-roasted, and fine flour, and millet, and
perl-spelt (chondrus) boiled in milk;- all these things should be
eaten cold, and similar articles of food and drink should be
administered.
22. The most important point of regimen to observe and be guarded
about in protracted diseases, is to pay attention to the exacerbations
and remissions of fevers, so as to avoid the times when food should
not be given, and to know when it may be administered without
danger; this last season is at the greatest possible distance from the
exacerbation.
23. One should be able to recognize those who have headache from
gymnastic exercises, or running, or walking or hunting, or any other
unseasonable labor, or from immoderate venery; also those who are of a
pale color, or troubled with hoarseness; those who have enlarged
spleen, those who are in a state of anaemia, those who are suffering
from tympanites, those having dry cough and thirst, those who are
flatulent, and have the course of the blood in their veins
intercepted; those persons whose hypochondria, sides, and back are
distended: those having torpor; those laboring under amaurosis, or
having noises in their ears; those suffering from incontinence of
urine or jaundice, or whose food is passed undigested; those who
have discharges of blood from the nose or anus, or who have flatulence
and intense pain, and who cannot retain the wind. In these cases you
may do mischief, but cannot possibly do any good by purging, but may
interrupt the spontaneous remissions and crises of the complaints.
24. If you think it expedient to let blood, see that the bowels be
previously settled, and then bleed; enjoin abstinence, and forbid
the use of wine; and complete the cure by means of a suitable regimen,
and wet fomentations. But if the bowels appear to be constipated,
administer a soothing clyster.
25. If you think it necessary to give medicines, you may safely
purge upwards by hellebore, but none of those should be purged
downwards. The most effectual mode of treatment is by the urine,