CHAP. IIII. Of Prognostickes to be made in VVounds.
THose Wounds are thought dangerous, wherein any large Nerve, Veine, * 1.1 or Artery are hurt. From the first there is feare of convulsion, but from the other large effusion of the veinous, or arterious blood, whence the powers are debilitated; also these are judged evill, which are upon the arme pitts, groines, leskes, joynts and betweene the fingers; and likewise those which hurt the head or taile of a Muscle. They are least dangerous of all other which wound onely the fleshy substance. But they are deadly which are inflicted upon the Blad∣der, Braine, Heart, Liver, Lungs, Stomacke and small guts. But if any Bone, Gri∣stle, * 1.2 Nerve or portion of the cheeke or prepuce, shall be cut away, they cannot bee restored. Contused wounds are more difficult to cure, than those which are onely from a simple solution of continuity; for before you must thinke to heale them up, you must suppurate and clense them; which cannot be done in a short time. Wounds which are round and circular are so much the worse; for there can be no unity unlesse by an angle, that is, a meeting together of two lines, which can have no place in * 1.3 round wounds, because a circular figure consists of one oblique line. Besides, wounds are by so much thought the greater, by how much their extremes and lipps are the further dis-joyned, which happens to round Wounds. Contrary to these are cornered wounds or such as are made alongst the fibers, as such as may bee easily healed.
Wounds may be more easily healed in young men, than in old, because in them nature is more vigorous, and there is a greater plenty of fruitefull, or good blood, by which the losse of the flesh may be the better and more readily restored, which is slowlier done in an old body, by reason their blood is smaller in quantity and more dry, and the strength of nature more languide.
Wounds received in the Spring, are not altogether so difficult to heale as those * 1.4 taken in Winter or Summer. For all excesse of heate and cold is hurtfull to them; it is ill for a convulsion to happen upon a Wound, for it is a signe that some Nervous body is hurt; the braine suffering together therewith, as that which is the originall of the Nerves. A Tumor comming upon great Wounds is good; for it shewes the force of nature is able to expell that which is harmefull, and to ease the wounded part. The organicall parts wholly cut off cannot againe be united: because a vitall part once severed and plucked from the trunke of the body cannot any more re∣ceive influence from the heart as from a roote without which there can bee no life. The loosed continuity of the Nerves, Veines, Arteries, and also the bones, is some∣times restored, not truely, and as they say, according to the first intention, but by the second, that is, by reposition of the like, but not of the same substance. The first intention takes place in the fleshie parts by converting the Alimentary bloud into the proper substance of the wounded part. But the second, in the spermatique parts in which the lost substance may be repaired by interposition of some heteroge∣neous body, which nature, diligent for its owne preservation, substitutes in place of * 1.5 that which is lost: for thus the body, which restores and agglutinats, is no bone but a Callus, whose originall matter is from an humor somewhat grosser than that, from whence the bones have their originall and beginning.