CHAP. XIX. How the section or amputation must be performed.
THe first care must be of the patients strength, wherefore let him be nourish∣ed with meats of good nutriment, easie digestion, and such as generate many spirits; as with the yolkes of Egges, and bread tosted and dipped in Sacke or Muskedine. Then let him bee placed, as is fit, and drawing the muscles upwards toward the sound parts, let them be tyed with a straite ligature a little a∣bove that place of the member which is to be cut off, with a strong and broad fillet like that which women usually bind up their haire withall; This ligature hath a * 1.1 threefold use; the first is, that it hold the muscles drawne up together with the skin, so that retiring backe presently after the performance of the worke, they may cover the ends of the cut bones, and serve them in stead of boulsters or pillowes when they are healed up, and so suffer with lesse paine the compression in susteining the rest of the body; besides also by this meanes the wounds are the sooner healed and ci∣catrized; for by how much more flesh or skinne is left upon the ends of the boner, by so much they are the sooner healed and cicatrized. The second is, for that it pro∣hibites the fluxe of blood by pressing and shutting up the veines and arteries. The third is, for that it much dulls the sense of the part by stupefying it; the animall spi∣rits by the straite compression being hindred from passing in by the Nerves: Wherefore when you have made your ligature, cut the flesh even to the bone with a sharpe and well cutting incision knife, or with a crooked knife, such as is here ex∣pressed.