Pharmacopœia Londinensis, or, The London dispensatory further adorned by the studies and collections of the Fellows, now living of the said colledg ... / by Nich. Culpeper, Gent.

Chap. 2. Of Hardning Medicines.

GALEN in Lib. 5. De Simpl. Med. Fa∣cult. Cap. 10. determins Hardning Medicines to be cold and moist, and he brings some arguments to prove it, against which other Physitians contest.

I shall not here stand to quote the Dispute, only take notice, That if softning Medicines be hot and moist (as we shewed even now) then hardning Medi∣cines must needs be cold and dry, because they are contrary to them.

• The Universal course of Nature will prove it for driness and moisture are passive qualities, neither can extremities consist in moisture as you may know, if you do but consider that driness is not attributed to the Air, nor Water, but to the Fire, and Earth.
• 2. The thing to be congealed must needs be moist, therefore the Medicine congealing must of necessity be dry, for if cold be joyned with driness, it con∣tracts the pores that so the humors cannot be scatter∣ed.

Yet you must observe a difference between Medi∣cines drying, making thick, hardning, and con∣gealing, of which differences a few words will not do amiss.

• 1. Such Medicines are said to dry, which draw out, or drink up the moisture, as a 〈◊〉〈◊〉 drinks up water.
• 2. Such Medicines are said to make thick, as do not consume the moisture, but ad driness to it, as you make Syrups into a thick Electuary by adding Pouders to them.
• 3. Such as congeal, neither draw out the moisture not make it thick by adding driness to it, but con∣tract it by vehement cold, as Water is frozen into Ice.
• 4. Hardning disfers from all these, for the parts of the Body swell and are filled with Flegmatick hu∣mors, or Melancholly Blood, which at last grows hard.

That you may cleerly understand this, observe but these two things.

• 1. What it is which worketh.
• 2. What it worketh upon.

That which worketh is outward cold, that which is wrought upon is a certain thickness & driness of hu∣mors, for if the humor were fluid as water is it might properly be said to be congealed by cold, but not so properly hardned. Thus you see cold & drines to be the cause of hardning. But enough of this (perhaps some may think too much) This hardning being so far from being useful, that it is obnoxious to the Body of Man, I pass it without more words. I suppose when Galen wrote of hardning Medicines, he intended such as make thick, and therefore amongst them he reckons up, Fleawort, Purslain, Housleek, and the like, which asswage the heat of the humors in Swel∣lings, and stop subtil and sharp Defluxious upon the Lungues, but of these more anon.