CHAP. LXIV. Of the itching of the womb.
IN women, especially such as are old, there often-times commeth an itching in the neck of the womb, which doth so trouble them with pain, and a desire to scratch, that it taketh away their sleep. Not long since a woman asked my counsel, that was so troubled with this kinde of maladie, that she was constrained to extinguish or stay the itching burning of her secret parts by sprinkling cinders of fire, and rubbing them hard on the place. I counselled her to take Aegypt▪ dissolved in sea-water or lee, and inject it in her secret parts with a syringe, and to wet stupes of flax in the same medicine, and put them up into the womb, and so she was cured. Many times this itch commeth in the fundament or testicles of aged men, by reason of the gathering together or conflux of salt phlegm, which when it falleth into the eyes, it causeth the patient to have much ado to refrain scratching: when this matter hath dispersed into the whole habit of the bodie, it causeth a burning or itching scab, which must be cured by a cooling and moistning diet, by phle∣botomie and purging of the salt humor, by baths and horns applied, with sca••ification and an∣nointing of the whole bodie with the unction following. ℞. axung. porcin. recent. lbi ss. sap. nig. vel gallici, salis nitri, assat. tartar. staphysag. an. ℥ ss. sulph. viv. ℥ i. argent. viv. ℥ii. acet. ros. quart. i. incorporate them all together, and make thereof a liniment according to art, and use it as is said before; unguentum enulatum cum Mercurio is thought to have great force, not without desert, to asswage the itch and the drie scab, Some use this that followeth. ℞. alum spum. nitr. sulph. viv. an. ʒ vi. staphys. ℥i. let them all be dissolved in vinegar of Roses, adding thereto butyr. recent. q. s. make thereof a liniment for the fore-named use.