The PREFACE.
MAny Authors are very short in the explaining of the Diseases of the Mesentery, Sweet-bread, and Caul; and the most of them have left them out, because they are hard to be known, and for the most part only from Dissection of dead Bodies; as appears by stories in Schenkius, Sennertus, and others. Yet they are very ordinary and usual: from whence Fernelius saith, That oftentimes there are causes of many Diseases in the Mesentery: as of Choller, Melancholly, Diarrhoea, Dysentery, evil Habit, Consumption, Faintness, of lingering Feavers, Vomitings, Chollicks, Tu∣mors, and Imposthumes. And Sylvius called the Mesentery, the Mother of many Diseases: by o∣thers she is called the Physitians Nurse. We may say the same of the Sweet-bread and Caul; for they are ignoble parts, and as it were sinks of the Body, to which the noble Members do send their Excrements. And although these parts (as all other) are subject to all kinds of Diseases, Simi∣lary, Organical, and Common, and many Symptomes arise from them; yet we will only speak of those which are most in practice, and comprehend this Book in five Chapters. The first shall be of the Obstruction of the Mesentery. The second of the Inflamation of the Mesentery. The third of the Imposthume, Scirrhus, and Ʋlcer of the Mesentery. The fourth of the Diseases of the Sweet∣bread. The fifth of the Diseases of the Caul.