Panala medica vel sanitatis et longævitatis alumna catholica: = The fruitfull and frugall nourse of sound health and long life. Per Guil: Folkingham Gen: Math. & Med. studiosum.

CHAP. IX.

Obseruations remarkable in the vse and ope∣ration of the Ale.

THat Physicke workes not a∣like in all Seasons and vp∣on all subiects, common sense informes the most stu∣pid poore Obseruer; but sometimes, though it bee methodically ministred by a good Artist, the expectation is illuded by excessiue or diminutiue operation; nor is it a matter of facile disquisition to beat out and discouer the certaine reason of such incertain∣tie. For some bodies, by a secret propriety of their owne natures, are easily and plenti∣fully purged with milde medicines, and o∣thers scarce moued with very strong Pur∣gations.

But of occult causes it is not pertinent nor fit, either to the place or my pen to discourse; onely a Touch or two of others, because, though more euident, they are not so per∣spicuous or manifest to vulgar notion, but that they may necessarily admit some particular demonstration.

The working of Cathartique medicines doth commonly vary (quoad majus & minus) according to the variation of Seasons, and the states and constitutions of mens bodies.

For the first: The hot and dry season or disposition of the Ayre extracts, euaporates, and wasts much of the humours of the body, & by consequence debilitates the same, and leaues lesse matter to furnish forth copious deiections; nor is it fit for purging Physicke which for most part heats and weakens.

Cold weather and Northerne winde con∣tract and straighten the passages, binde the body, exiccate and thicken the humors, and make them rebellious, or lesse obedient at least, to Physicke, which in these cases must needs be lesse copious in euacuation.

South windes, moist Climates, and wet or Rheumatique weather, humect the body, loosen the humours, and occasion plentifull deiections vpon due meanes.

Moderate seasons, Southerne winde, (not boystrous) and temperate Regions are most accommodate to Purgations for production of best operations.

Touching the state of the Body; hot and moist constitutions with most ease and safety of all others doe beare and obey Cathartique medicines.

Hot and dry bodies purge sparingly for lack of matter and its vnaptnesse to moue, and must with caution be purged with well qua∣lified meanes, lest they distemper with hea∣ting and drying; to meet with which incon∣uenience let such constitutions take this Po∣tion a little before meales.

The moist, the young, and those who are accustomed to a sedentary life, are easily mo∣ued by Purge, according to its strength and the Patients ballast of humours and excre∣ments; the like may be said of women, sith they ate vsually of soft, loose, rare and patent textures, yet none of these accord with strong medicines, though pregnant women may in the third, fourth, and fift Months (the liga∣ments, by which the child adheres to the wombe, being then more firme) admit of moderate euacuations in acute diseases at∣tended with turgent matter.

Robust strong bodies, and those that are in∣ured to laborious liuing, and constitutions indued with obtuse sense of the parts, doe slowly yeeld vnto deiectiue meanes, yet may they safely suffer plentifull euacuations.

Corpulent bodies likewise, though they ea∣sily endure purgations, doe purge with some difficulty, because their constitutions are cold, their corporall passages straight, and their spirits but few, and those turbid and grosse.

The thinne, the leane, and the temperate, are easily moued by Physicke, yet purge but sparingly, because of the rarity of their tex∣tures and tenuity of their humours, nor are strong purges accommodated for them, by reason they weaken their languid virtue, and spend their dissipable spirits.

Note further; that Plethorique, full and foggie bodies, whose vessells are stuft with tur∣gid illuvies of copious and restagnant Hu∣mors (whether congested by surfet or other repletions) doe many times, vpon light and slight Purgations, powre one profuse and copious deiections, with much perturbation of the Bowells many times. For the redun∣dant humors long pent vp, and now finding the veines and vessells reserate, and the pas∣sages

of export expansed by the purge, Qua data porta ruunt, rush and gush out (like li∣quor forth of a full cask pierced and vented) in copious flux, without any effrenate or vn∣bridled force or effect of the medicine, but by reason that Nature, mouing to expulsion, now thus a little inhabled doth deonerate and ease her selfe of ouer-burthens. For whilst Nature is vigorous, strong and sound, and mannages well her offices of gouerne∣ment ouer our bodies, shee excludes and driues out of them whatsoeuer is peccant and superfluous; but when shee is ouer-bur∣thened and ouer-borne with abundance, shee so attends and waits all occasions and oppor∣tunities of easement, that shee apprehends many times the first and least hint of helpe, and ioynes her owne forces with the for∣reine aid.

Yet sometimes profuse deiections fall out contrary to Nature, when through imbecil∣lity of her regent and retentiue faculty, she suf∣fers defluxions.

Or though she be more valid and strong, yet is she sometimes so much prouoked and molested with the copie and acrimony of the humor, that shee cannot retaine it, but must euen let and suffer it by its own force to sluce

and breake forth from out its vessells and re∣ceptacles.

Both these euacuations are symptomaticall, vnnaturall and vselesse, because the benigne and salutary succi, together with the maligne and pernicious, doe promiscuously and irre∣gularly, without any election, burst and rush out with violence.

But these profuse euacuations, whether symptomatique or legitimate (exterminating onely whats cumbersome, either in the kind or in the quantum) whether occasioned through disorder of the Patient, or procee∣ding from other causes (euident or occult) iumping and ioyning with the contemporary operation of a purgatiue medicine (though milde and moderate) cast foule aspersions vpon the Physician, where concurring cau∣ses are nor well considered or not duely weighed of the censurer.

To leaue no colour of cauill to the carping Momus, and to meet with the many incom∣prehensible secrets shut vp in Natures closet; my Panala neuer astonishes her with sodaine, nor debilitates with vehement assault, but gently assayes her with medication of so mild allay and gradation, (facilitate non vi operan∣do) that it may securely, without any endain∣gering

the patient, sound and search out the abstruse and vnknowne conditions of any constitution, euen of the commoderate and soundest in integritie of sanitude, which ac∣cording to Hippocrates (Aph. 3.37.) brookes not Purgations without difficulty and perill, because by setting vpon the spirituall and bal∣samique Mumie, for want of vitious humors to worke vpon, they cause grindings in the guts, swoundings, vertiginous and other symp∣tomes, and by continuance colliquation and consumption.

Obserue further; that after foure or fiue dayes vse of this Ale, much matter being therewith auoided, you cannot expect the daily continuance of like copious deiection, as you found at first (although by cleering some passages, which perhaps were blocked vp before, the wayes for free working be∣come more patent) if you bee temperate in meat and drinke, and the time in wind and wea∣ther, except you extend the dose or draughts in taking larger proportions of the Me∣dicine.

Nor will the Second Ale, prepared by rein∣fusion of the same Fund or Bag, doe much more, for matter of purging by stoole, (though it will then effectually purge by vrine) than

keepe the body soluble, by reason the purga∣tiue spirits of the ingredients, being more dis∣soluble and allectiue than the alteratiues, will be well-nigh exhausted and drawne-out by former infusion.

This orderly discent and passage, from purging by the first Infusion to meere solu∣bility (which in most cases, will then be all-sufficient) by the Second, cuts off and preuents all occasions of constipation or costiuenesse (the vsuall subsequents to purgers) by conti∣nuing the cutting of humors, deoppilating of the vessells, and by still stimulating or sol∣liciting the excretiue facultie to the ordinate fit performance of its office. But the additi∣on of two ounces of Sene with Rubarb and Mechoacan, of each halfe an ounce, vnto the ingredients in the bag, will now indifferently furnish the second Infusion with purgatiue fa∣culties, and for the alteratiue, it retaines suf∣ficient force in the first Composition, as a∣foresaid.

Note moreouer, that in some cases, by competent continuance of this Medicin (as in other Dietetique Physicke) there follow and are brought forth excellent fruits and effects of Alteratiue working in the Bodie, long after ending and giuing-ouer the taking

of the same, insomuch, that many time a mo∣neth or more thence, you shall finde much more fruit and benefit by it (without any euill Diathasis, or impression of disaffect cōtracted from the extended vse thereof, than, during the continuance of drinking the Ale, you could well conceiue, or by any probable coniecture from present perseuerance, expect or propound vnto your selfe, provided, that you doe not relapse through manifest disorder or grosse distemper, the Patients scourge, and the Physitians scandall.

The reason of such Haruest of physicall fruits in expectance and future, rather than in Present, may well be, that Nature, being kept in continuall Action, and the Humours and Spirits in more motion than ordinarie, by the daily vse of the Potion (though gen∣tle and moderate) the effects thereof cannot be so setled, nor so sensibly discerned, during the Machine of Medication, as it will bee af∣ter some competent repose and Cessation from the purging, for composing all agitati∣ons. Besides that, the plenteous store of salu∣tarie spirits, deriued from so excellent a potion by an extended course of drinking, diffused and impressed into al the parts & dimensions of the body, doth with the Opifique spirits of

the body continue mutuall cooperations, many daies, or rather weekes, after the gi∣uing ouer of the Ale, to the perfect maturati∣on of the fruits.