Kitap 2
12
12 Now purging was promoted by the ancients in almost all diseases by various medicaments, and by frequent clysters; they administered either black hellebore root, or polypody fern root, or the copper scales which the Greeks call lepida chalkou, or the milky juice of seaside spurge, of which one drop on bread purges freely, or milk, whether from an ass or cow, or goat, to which a little salt was added, which they boiled, and having removed the solidified skin, they obliged their patients to drink the whey-like remainder. But medicaments generally irritate the stomach; a motion when excessively liquid, or a clyster often repeated, weakens the patient. Never, therefore, in illness is a medicament which causes such a motion rightly given, unless when that malady is without fever, as when black hellebore root is given either to those with black bile and to those suffering from insanity with melancholy, or to those who have their sinews in some part paralysed. But in the presence of fevers, it suffices for the purpose of a purge to take such food and drink as both nourish and at the same time soften the belly; and there are sorts of illness in which purgation by milk is suitable.
