The art of curing diseases by expectation with remarks on a supposed great case of apoplectick fits : also most useful observations on coughs, consumptions, stone, dropsies, fevers, and small pox : with a confutation of dispensatories, and other various discourses in physick / by Gideon Harvey ...

CHAP. VII. (Book 7)

Of Dull-head-Doctors, Gravel and Stone, and several other Distempers. (Book 7)

1. HYpochondriack Affections, some sorts of Scurveys, Obstructions of the Bowels, steri∣lity and infoecundities of Women, Ulcers within the lower Belly, and especially, Gravel and Stone, come under the Jurisdiction of Tankerd Physicians, though their usurp'd dominion over these Di∣seases doth not extend beyond the Summer Months (according to the trite saying, mensibus in quibus R. non bonum bibere water) and the coming into Season of Oysters, which is its utmost bounds and li∣mits. Notwithstanding the avidity of their perquisites over-poysing, the greatest prejudice their Hypo∣chondriac, and Nephritick Patients

can receive, they do not stick to impose on them drinking of Dul∣ledg, or Tunbridg Waters in the hardest Frost, with a Condition of boyling them half away, or converting of 'em into Posset, or rather a curdy sort of Soupe. What ever ease and solace the crazy are sensible of from the washing and rensing of their Sto∣mach, urinary Passages, and Guts, of floaty Humors for the present, the continuance by a potent Re∣striction, wedges and impacts (as I said before) the slymy feculen∣cies into very stubborn Clogs, which can no otherwise be avoid∣ed, then by interposing alternate∣ly Purges, respondent to the Indi∣cations of the Disease, morbifick Causes, and other Circumstances.

2. Gravel and Stone are to be considered either in their fits of pain, diminution, and suppression of Urine; or when unmoved, the the Patient is free of those Symp∣toms. To exhibite Waters of the

one kind or other in the times of misery, is to irritate and press those disturbant Causes to a greater fu∣ry, and increase of Pains, and sometimes of total suppression of Urine. Pains thus augmented, and continued, invite Inflammations and Fevers, which in very many prove Quarter-masters of Death. The Urine suppressed for six or seven days, turns to a fatal Drow∣siness and Coma, or Lethargy, to which always a Fever is annext. Purges are equally obnoxious to the same Evils, and therefore ought very carefully to be avoided. A course of Waters slabber ••d down out of the fit, by carrying off a loose mucus, detruding floating thin Impurities, and by locking up and compacting the grosser Humors, do undoubtedly very much pro∣long the interval of fits, tye up Pains, and prevent the quick re∣turn of the Symptoms forementi∣oned; but by this means, the clog of those gross saline humors is de∣teriorated

into immedicable, and the Stone so aggrandized, that throwing the Patient into a worse fit than ever, kills him. So that the sum of all is, that waters are impowred to grant an easie Life, and a short one; and so contrary to the cure of the Stone, that they do not so much as prevent the growth of it, unless it be during the time of the course they drink them; which appears by this, that the next fit a man falls into after his course of waters, is ordinarily worse, than any he felt before.

3. That the dissolving and break∣ing of the Stone in the Bladder, or Kidneys, is within the sphere of Activity of Medicines, is a belief, that in improbability equals the highest fiction of Poetry. To break a Diamont, supposed to lye upon the ball of the Eye, by force of hammer, expresses a modus faciendi, or manner how it may be done imaginatively; but to reduce into crumbs, gritt, and powder, a hard

Stone contained in so sensible a part, as the Bladder, by Goats blood, and testateous Powders, by Stones and Glass grinded to the smallest proportion, and by Ashes, whereof there is an Example in the Electuarium Iustinum, Nephroca∣tharticum Arnol. Villan. de cineribus avicennae, diureticum Montagn; and by decoctions or distillations of such blunt materials, as the five opening Roots, Saxifrage, Strawberries, Winter Cherries, Daucus Seeds, and the like, doth for manner of acting, exceed the Phansie or Con∣ception of the acutest Phylosopher; and yet the powers of the Stone∣breaking Medicines meet with such Credit in Physicians, that beyond possibility they most impudently assert matter of fact, performed by them daily upon those, that are troubled with the Stone. Well may it be said, Exceptis Medicis, nihil stultius, audacius, & mendacius Grammaticis. But farther, to pre∣tend to dissolve a Stone in the

Bladder, by might of cutting Me∣dicines, after their first edge must needs, have been blunted in the Stomach, and other Bowels, thro' which they are obliged to pass with a tedious circuit, before they can arrive to the field of Action, the Bladder, is a Rotomodate ma∣ny degrees higher, out-doing the worst of Gipsies. If my Memory informs me right, I have met, with a Narration in Duretus's A••notat. up∣on Hollerius, where he recites a Phy∣sician was presented to a Prince of Conde, to cure his Son of the Stone, by dissolving it in the Bladder in a few days. The prudent caution of the Prince or his Brother re∣quired the Experiment of his Me∣dicine to be first made upon ano∣ther Boy of a meaner Extracti∣on, and troubled with the same Disease; a day or two after the taking of his dissolving Elixir, the 〈◊〉〈◊〉 having been miserably tortn∣ned, Ghosted, whose Stomach, up∣on diffection of the dead body,

was discerned corroded and ulcer'd in several parts of it.

4. The Millepedes or Sows (next to their Wives and Daughters) hold the highest rank among the Physicians their Stone-grinders, though hitherto it has not appear∣ed in what particles of 'em those cutting acuities have been latent. If to their diuretick impulse they are pleased to affix that power, Rhenish Wine will plead for the Prerogative, which notwithstand∣ing is accounted a general parent of the Stone and Gravel to the Germans. But these stupid Fools in Physick are possest of a super∣stitious Faith of a T-rd, and such like Compounds, beyond the Po∣pish credenda of a rotten worm∣caten Relick. If they meet, in Mesues Avenzoar or Averroes, with a Character of an Elks hoof, or testicle of a Bever against Convul∣sions, though a Mouse hath oft∣ner carried a Mountain on his back, than those Simples ever cu∣red

any such Distemper; yet do they continue in the use of them with that opiniatreness and brazen Confidence, that they conclude a man beyond his Senses, that will not yoke with them in their Phy∣sick bigottry. That a Spider, Toad, or Mercury tyed about a mans Neck is a certain defence against the Plague; or that a Bezoar Pepple, the Goa Stone, Pearl, and the like, are infallible curatives of that, and all other malignant Fe∣vers; or an Eel-skin fastned to a womans Thigh, doth dispel hyste∣rick fits, are part of the foolish credenda of Physicians. From be∣ing a little versed in the silly Me∣thodus medendi, and now and then ripping up the body of a Male∣factor in publick, and in their Capacity of prating of monstrous Pretences, and vain Discoveries in Phylosophy and Physick, they infer themselves absolute Profes∣sors of their Art; whereas a Sea-horse in the bleeding himself, a

Dog in eating Grass, a Crane in squirting Salt-water into his Fun∣dament for a Clyster, must by them be acknowledg'd for their Masters, to whom, as their Scho∣lars, they are indebted for part of their practical Physick.

5. This may be received for great Truth, that the procatarc∣tick, internal antecedent, effici∣ent, material, and adjuvant Cau∣ses, being substracted and redres∣sed, and that course continued to a great length of time, by defect of sabulous nourishment, and not being cherish'd, Nature by help of its Spirits and restored ferment (as they term it) will convert the hardest and biggest Stone into a mouldering, (provided by Age, and decay of the Bowels the Pati∣ent be not reduced too low) which perceived, the excretory passages require to be well relax'd, and rendred slippery by mucilaginous Emollients, and afterwards to be stimulated gently and gradually

by some diureticks, to throw off the gritt. And this is the only certain, and secure method of cu∣ring that hitherto incurable Di∣sease. The Earl of C. now deceas∣ed, some years since was extream∣ly tormented with a sharp pain about a hand breadth above the groin, his easiest posture was ly∣ing on his Bed. To his Quality and great pain were mostly suta∣ble five or six great Physicians; one might as congruously say six great Magots, or six great Mites, people very improperly attributing the word Great to a thing so little and mean as an Expectation C. Physician; scarce one in twenty knowing the tithe of what he has forgotten, and what he still re∣members is scarce worth knowing. The little success that attended their Prescriptions, convinced his Lordship of their scauty Judgment, which proved as various as un∣true, the one insinuating the pain to be a Cholick from Wind, the

other an Ulcer; the other this, and another that. At last I had the Honour of having the cure of his Lordship committed to my care; upon no long examination of the matter, I assured his Lord∣ship the pain in that part of his Belly was occasioned by an an∣gular small Stone, that stuck in the Vreter, whereunto, being a long time prepossest with the false Sen∣timents of his late chashier'd phy∣sick Doctors, he was very unwil∣ling to give Credit, expressing that none of his Predecessors had ever been troubled with a Disease, that proves so commonly Heredi∣tary, nor himself had ever dis∣cerned the least sign of Gravel; moreover that a Kinsman of his had lately been afflicted with a pain in the same part, that was evidenced to be caused by Wind, from the carminative (wind-break∣ing) Remedies, that entirely dis∣cussed it. I replyed Artifici in sua Arte Credendum, and that the event

would infallibly demonstrate the truth of the thing. I kept this Noble Patient to a very thin Di∣et a long time, and used Medi∣cines answerable to the Method, and Indications above mentioned, which in conclusion discharged five or six Stones, about the big∣ness of a Pea, sometimes one, othertimes two in a day; from their colour and rough outside, they notified to be affalls and large crumblings of a greater Stone, formed in the Kidneys, and thro' substracting from its growth, de∣fect of cherishment, and through correcting of its causes was divi∣ded into large parts.