CHAP. XXIX. Of Fomentations.
A Fotus or fomentation is an evaporation or hot lotion, chiefly used to mollifie, relax and asswage pain, consisting of medicines having these faculties. A fomentation commonly useth to be moist, being usually made of the same things as embrocations, to wit, of roots, seeds, flowers, boiled in water or wine. The roots here used are commonly of mallows, marsh∣mallows, and lillies. The seeds are of mallows, marsh-mallows, parsley, smallage, line, fenugreek. Flowers are of camomil, melilot, figs, raisins, and the like: all which are to be boiled in wine, wa∣ter, or Lye, to the consumption of the third part or the half: as,
℞. Rad. alth. & lil. an. ℥ ii. sem. lini. foenug. cumin. an. ʒ iii. flo. cham. melil. & aneth. an. p i. summit. orig. m. ss. bulliant in aequis partibus aquae & vini, aut in duabus partibus aquae, & una vini, aut in Lixivio cineris sarmentorum. ad tertiae partis consumptionem, fiat fotus. In imitation hereof you may easily de∣scribe other fomentations, as occasion and necessity shall require.
We use fomentations before we apply cataplasms, ointments or plasters to the part, that so we may open the breathing places or pores of the skin, relax the parts, attenuate the humor, that thus the way may be the more open to the following medicines. The body being first purged, fo∣mentations may be used to what parts you please. They may be applied with a female-spunge, for it is gentler and softer then the male: with felt, woollen cloaths, or the like, dipped in the warm decoction wrung out, and often renewed; otherwise, you may fill a Swines bladder half full (espe∣cially in pains of the sides) of the decoction, or else a stone-bottle, so to keep hot the longer; yet so, that the bottle be wrapped in cotton, wool, or the like soft thing, that so it may not by the hardness and roughness offend the part, according to Hippocrates.