The workes of that famous chirurgion Ambrose Parey translated out of Latine and compared with the French. by Th: Johnson

CHAP. XXXIX. Of procuring evacuation by stoole, or a fluxe of the belly.

NAture often times, both by it selfe, of its owne accord, as also helped by laxative and purging medicines, casts into the belly and guts, as in∣to the sinke of the body, the whole matter of a pestilent disease, whence are caused Diarrhaea's, Lienteries, and Dysenteries; you may distinguish these kindes of fluxes of the belly, by the evacuated excre∣ments. For if they be thinne and sincere, that is, reteine the nature of one, and that a simple humour, as of choler, melancholy or phlegme, and if they be cast forth in a great quantity, without the ulceration or excoriation of the guts, vehement or fret∣ting paine, then it is a Diarrhaea, which some also call fluxus humoralis. It is called a Lienteria, when as by the resolved retentive faculty of the stomacke and guts caused * 1.1 by ill humours, either there collected, or flowing from some other place, or by a cold & moist distemper, the meat is cast forth crude, & almost as it was taken. A Dy∣senteria * 1.2 is when as many and different things, and oft times mixt with blood, are cast forth with pain, gripings, and an ulcer of the guts, caused by acride choler, fretting insunder the coats of the vessels.

But if in any kinde of disease, certainely in a pestilent one, fluxes of the belly hap∣pen immoderate in quantity, and horrible in the quality of their contents, as liquid, viscous, frothy as from melted greace, yellow, red, purple, greene, ash-coloured, blacke, and exceeding stinking. The cause is various, and many sorts of ill humours, * 1.3 which taken hold of by the pestilent malignity, turne into divers species, differing in their whole kinde both from their particular, as also from nature in generall, by reason of the corruption of their proper substance, whose inseparable signe is stinch, which is oft times accompanied by wormes.

In the campe at Amiens a pestilent Dysentery was overall the Campe, in this the strongest Souldiers purged forth meere blood: I dissecting some of their dead bo∣dies, * 1.4

observed the mouths of the Mesaraike Veines and Arteries, opened and much swollen, and whereas they entered into the guts, were just like little Catyledones, out of which, as I pressed them, there flowed blood. For both by the excessive heat of the summers sunne, and the mindes of the enraged souldiers, great quantity of a∣cride and cholericke humour was generated, and so flowed into the belly: but you shall know whether the greater or the lesser guts be ulcerated, better by the mixture of the blood with the excrements, than by the site of the paine, therefore in the one you must rather worke by Glysters, but in the other, by Medicines taken by the mouth.

Therefore if by gripings, a tenesmus, the murmuring and working of the guts, you suspect in a pestilent disease, that nature endeavours to disburden it self by the lower parts, neither in the meane while doe it succeed to your desire, then must it be helped forward by art, as by taking a potion of ℥ss. of hiera simplex, and a dramme of Dia∣phaenicon * 1.5 dissolved in worme-wood water.

Also Glysters are good in this case, not onely for that they asswage the gripings and paines, and draw by continuation or succession from the whole body, but also because they free the mesaraike veines and guts from obstruction and stuffing, so that by opening and as it were unlocking of the passages, nature may afterwards more freely free it selfe from the noxious humours. In such glysters they also sometimes mixe two or three drammes of Treacle, that by one and the same labour they may retunde the venenate malignity of the matter.

There may also be made for the same purpose suppositories of boyled hony ℥i. of hier a picra and common salt, of each ʒss. or that they may bee the stronger, of ho∣ny * 1.6 ℥iii. of oxe gall ℥i. of Scammony, euphorbium and coloquintida poudred, of each ʒss. The want of these may be supplied by nodula's made in this forme. ℞. vitell. ovor. nu. iii. fellis bubuli, & mellis, an. ℥ss. salis com. ʒss. let them be stirred together, and well incorporated, and so parted into linnen ragges, and then bound up into no∣dula's, of the bignesse of a filberd, and so put up into the fundament, you may make them more acride by adding some powder of Euphorbium or Coloquintida.

Notes

• * 1.1

  What a Diar∣rhaea is.
• * 1.2

  What a Dysente∣ria is.
• * 1.3

  The cause of va∣rious, and stink∣ing excrements in the plague.
• * 1.4

  A history.
• * 1.5

  A potion.
• * 1.6

  Suppositories.