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CHAP. XIX. What is fit to be done after the fit of the G••ut is over.
* 1.1IT is convenient when the pain is asswagd, that you strengthen the joints. Now, to strengthen them is not only to binde and drie, but wholly to amend the weakness left in the part by the disease, that is to discuss the humor, if any superfluity thereof remain; but to humect the part;* 1.2 if the moisture be exhausted and dryed up. But such as are troubled with the gout, after they are freed from their pain, have notwithstanding such impotencie of their joints that they cannot go of a long time after; for that the nerves and tendons which are in great number in the feet, being moistened with much phlegm, are so relaxed, that they can no more sustain or bear them∣selves upon their feet, then paper when it is wet can be made stand. Wherefore, that they may recover the use of their feet, the impacted humor must by all means be discussed, and spent with fomentations, cataplasms drying and astringent emplasters. You may use the formerly described fomentation, encreasing the quantity of alum and salt, and adding thereto a like quantity of sul∣phur vivum: then the following emplaster shall be applyed thereto. ℞. mas. ••mplast. contra. ruptu∣ram ℥ iiii tereb. ℥ ii. pulv. ros. rub. nucum. cupress. gallarum, gran. myrtil. & fol. ejusdem, thuris, mastich. & caryophil. an. ʒi malexentur omnia simul, manibus injunctis cleo myrtino & mastichino, fiat emplastrum. Let it be spread upon leather to a just bigness, and applied to the top and sole of the foot. Draw over the plaster, and the whole leg a stocking made of a tanned-dogs-skin; this emplaster streng∣theneth the nerves,* 1.3 draweth forth the humor impact therein, and intercepts the defluxion. But the dog-skin-stocking preserveth the native heat of the part, and for that it bindeth, hindreth the defluxion into the feet.