CHAP. XXXVII. Of Spitting, Salivation, Belching, Hicketting, and making of Water.
THat long evacuations may be made by Spitting and Salivation,* 1.1 you may learn by the ex∣ample of such as have a plurifie; for the matter of the plurifie being turned into pus, the purulent matter suckt up by the rare and spongeous substance of the lungs, & thence drawn into the aspera arteria, is lastly cast out by the mouth.
There is none ignorant, how much such as have the Lues Venerea are helped by Salivation and Spitting. But these shall be procured by a Masticatory of the roots of Ireos,* 1.2 Pellitory of Spain, Mastich, and the like; the mucilage of Line-seeds held in the mouth will work the same effect.
That such as have a moist brain may expel their superfluous humors by sneesing and blowing their noses; the brain, by the strength of the expulsive faculty,* 1.3 being stirred up to the exclusion of that which is harmful, may be known by the example of old people and children which are daily purged by their noses; the brain is stirred up to both kindes of excretion from causes either internal or external: from the internal, as by a phlegmatick and vaporous matter, which contained in the brain, offends it; externally, as by receiving the beams of the sun in the nostrils, or by tickling them with a feather, or blowing into them the powder of Hellebore, Euphorbium, Pyrethrum, Mustard-seeds, and the like Sternutamentories. For then the brain is straitned by its own expulsive faculty, to the excretion of that which is troublous unto it. Sneesing breaketh forth with noise, for that the matter passeth through straits, to wit, by the straitning passages of the Os cribrosum, which is seated at the roots of the nostrils. It is not fit to cause sneesing in a body very plethorick, unless you have first premised general medicines, lest the humors should be more powerfully drawn into the brain, and so cause an Apoplexie, Vertigo, or the like symptoms.