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CHAP. LXVI. Of the relaxation of the navell in children.
OFten times in children newly borne, the navell swelleth as bigge as an egg, because it hath not bin well cut or bound, or because the whayish humours are flowed thither, or because that part hath extended it selfe too much by crying, by reason of the paines of the fretting of the childes guts, many times the childe bringeth that tumour joined with an abscesse with him from his mother wombe: but let not the Chirurgian assay to open that abscesse, for if it be opened, the guts come out through the incision, as I * 1.1 have seene in many, and especially in a child of my Lord Martigues; for when Pe∣ter of the Rocke, the Chirurgian, opened an abscesse that was in it, the bowels ranne out at the incision, and the infant died; and it wanted but little that the Gentlemen of my Lords retinue that were there, had strangled the Chirurgian. Therefore when John Gromontius the Carver desired me, and requested mee of late that I would doe * 1.2 the like in his sonne, I refused to doe it, because it was in danger of its life by it alrea∣dy, and in three daies after the abscesse broke, and the bowells gushed out, and the childe died.