urine be passed, or the disease terminate in an abscess: give
pine-fruit and myrrh in a linctus, and further give a very little
oxymel to drink; but if they are very thirsty, some barley-water.
11. Peripneumonia, and pleuritic affections, are to be thus
observed: If the fever be acute, and if there be pains on either side,
or in both, and if expiration be if cough be present, and the sputa
expectorated be of a blond or livid color, or likewise thin, frothy,
and florid, or having any other character different from the common,
in such a case, the physician should proceed thus: if the pain pass
upward to the clavicle, or the breast, or the arm, the inner vein in
the arm should be opened on the side affected, and blood abstracted
according to the habit, age, and color of the patient, and the
season of the year, and that largely and boldly, if the pain be acute,
so as to bring on deliquium animi, and afterwards a clyster is to be
given. But if the pain be below the chest, and if very intense,
purge the bowels gently in such an attack of pleurisy, and during
the act of purging give nothing; but after the purging give oxymel.
The medicine is to be administered on the fourth day; on the first
three days after the commencement, a clyster should be given, and if
it does not relieve the patient, he should then be gently purged,
but he is to be watched until the fever goes off, and till the seventh
day; then if he appear to be free from danger, give him some
unstrained ptisan, in small quantity, and thin at first, mixing it
with honey. If the expectoration be easy, and the breathing free, if
his sides be free of pain, and if the fever be gone, he may take the
ptisan thicker, and in larger quantity, twice a day. But if he do
not progress favorably, he must get less of the drink, and of the
draught, which should be thin, and only given once a day, at
whatever is judged to be the most favorable hour; this you will
ascertain from the urine. The draught is not to be given to persons
after fever, until you see that the urine and sputa are concocted (if,
indeed, after the administration of the medicine he be purged
frequently, it may be necessary to give it, but it should be given
in smaller quantities and thinner than usual, for from inanition he
will be unable to sleep, or digest properly, or wait the crisis);
but when the melting down of crude matters has taken place, and his
system has cast off what is offensive, there will then be no
objection. The sputa are concocted when they resemble pus, and the
urine when it has reddish sediments like tares. But there is nothing
to prevent fomentations and cerates being applied for the other
pains of the sides; and the legs and loins may be rubbed with hot oil,
or anointed with fat; linseed, too, in the form of a cataplasm, may be
applied to the hypochondrium and as far up as the breasts. When
pneumonia is at its height, the case is beyond remedy if he is not
purged, and it is bad if he has dyspnoea, and urine that is thin and
acrid, and if sweats come out about the neck and head, for such sweats
are bad, as proceeding from the suffocation, rales, and the violence
of the disease which is obtaining the upper hand, unless there be a
copious evacuation of thick urine, and the sputa be concocted; when
either of these come on spontaneously, that will carry off the
disease. A linctus for pneumonia: Galbanum and pine-fruit in Attic
honey; and southernwood in oxymel; make a decoction of pepper and
black hellebore, and give it in cases of pleurisy attended with
violent pain at the commencement. It is also a good thing to boil
opoponax in oxymel, and, having strained it, to give it to drink; it
answers well, also, in diseases of the liver, and in severe pains
proceeding from the diaphragm, and in all cases in which it is
beneficial to determine to the bowels or urinary organs, when given in
wine and honey; when given to act upon the bowels, it should be
drunk in larger quantity, along with a watery hydromel.
12. A dysentery, when stopped, will give rise to an aposteme, or
tumor, if it do not terminate in fevers with sweats, or with thick and
white urine, or in a tertian fever, or the pain fix upon a varix, or
the testicles, or on the hip-joints.