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CHAP. XX. The general cure both of the scalding of the water, and the virulent Strangury.
* 1.1WE must diversly order thy cure of this disease, according to the variety of the cau∣ses and accidents thereof. First, care must be had of the diet, and all such things shun∣ned as inflame the blood, or cause windiness; or which nature are all diuretick and flatulent things, as also strong and virulent exercises. Purging and bleeding are convenient, es∣pecially, if fulness cause the affect. Womens companies must be shunned and thoughts of vene∣reous matters; the patient ought not to lye upon a soft bed, but upon a quilt or mattrice, and ne∣ver, if he can help it, upon his back: boiled meats are better then rosted, especially boile with sorrel, lettuce, purslain, cleansed barly, and the four cold seeds beaten: for sauce, let him use none, unless the juice of an orange, pomegranate, or verjuice; let him shun wine, and in stead thereof use a decoction of barly and liquorice, an hydromel, or hydrosaccarum with a little cinna∣mon, or that which is termed Potus divinus. In the morning let him sup of a barly cream, where∣in hath been boiled a nodulus of the four cold seeds beaten together with the seeds of white pop∣py; for thus it refrigerateth, mitigateth and cleanseth; also the syrups of marsh-mallows and maiden-hair are good. Also purging the belly with half an ounce of Cassia, sometimes alone, o∣therwhiles with a dram, or half a dram of Rubarb in powder put thereto, is good. And these fol∣lowing pills are also convenient.* 1.2 ℞. massae pilul. sine quibus ℈i. rhei electi ʒss camphurae gr. iiii. cum terebinthinâ formentur pilulae;* 1.3 let them be taken after the first sleep. Venice turpentine alone, or adding thereto some Rubarb in powder, with oil of sweet almonds newly drawn without fire, or some syrup of maiden-hair, is a singular medicine in this case, for it hath an excellent lenitive and cleansing faculty, as also to help forwards the expulsive faculty, to cast forth the virulent mat∣ter contained in the Prostatae. You may by the bitterness perceive how it resists putrefaction, and you may gather how it performs its office in the reins and urinary parts, by the smell it leaves in the urine after the use thereof. But if there be any who cannot take it in form of a bole, you may easily make it potable, by dissolving it in a mortar with the yolk of an egg, and some white wine,* 1.4 as I learned of a certain Apothecary, who kept it as a great secret. If the disease come by inanition or emptiness, it shall be helped by fatty injections, oily and emollient potions, and inwardly taking and applying these things which have the like faculty, and shunning these things which caused the disease. How to cure that which happens by contagion, or unpure copulation, it shall be abundantly shewed in the ensuing Chapter.