Enchiridion medicum: containing the causes, signs, and cures of all those diseases, that do chiefly affect the body of man: divided into three books. With alphabetical tables of such matters as are therein contained. Whereunto is added a treatise, De facultatibus medicamentorum compositorum, & dosibus. / By Robert Bayfield.

CHAP. XXX.

HYDROCEPHALƲS: * 1.1 is as it were a drop∣sie of the head, by a waterish humour; and is a disease almost peculiar to infants new∣ly born.

The violent compression of the head by the hand of the midwife, or a fall, * 1.2 or contusion may be the cause; from hence comes a break∣ing of a vein, or artery; and an effusion of blood under the skin; which by corruption becom∣ing wheyish, at last degenerateth into a certain waterish humour, or abundance of serous and acrid blood, sweating through the pores of the vessels, as between the musculous skin of the forehead; and the Pericranium, or between the skull and the Duramater; or in the ventricles of the brain may be the cause.

It is a tumour without pain, soft, * 1.3 and much yeelding to the pressure of the finger.

1. If it bee a tumour contained be∣tween the musculous skinne and the Peri∣cranium.

2. When it remaineth between the Pericra∣nium and the skull, the tumour is a little harder, and there is a little sense of pain.

3. When it remaineth between the skull and the Duramater, or in the ventricles of the

brain, there is dulnesse of sight, and hearing: the tumour doth not yeeld so much to the touch, the pain is more vehement, the head more swollen, the forehead stands further out, the eye is fixt and immoveable, and also weeps by reason of a serous humour sweating out of the brain. * 1.4 Vesalius writes that he saw a girle of two years old, out of whose head rann nine pound of water: Some their heads grow so big, that their necks cannot bear them.

An external tumour is easily taken away; * 1.5 It must first be assailed with resolving me∣dicines.

℞. * 1.6 Pulveris absynthii, cammomillae, meliloti an. ℥ij. Butyri recentis, olei cammomillae an. ℥.iv. cerae parum, fiat linimentum.

Vel

℞. * 1.7 Olei cammomillae, vel anethini ℥. iv. sulphu∣ris ℥.j. fiat linimentum.

If it be complicated with the Lues venerea, mix with the liniment a little Ʋnguentum enulatum. If it cannot be so overcome, you must make an incision, taking heed of the temporal muscle, and then presse out all the humour; then the wound must be filled with dry lint, and cove∣red with double bolsters, and then bound with a fitting Ligature.

Notes

• * 1.1

  〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉.
• * 1.2

  Causa.
• * 1.3

  Signa.
• * 1.4

  Vesalius.
• * 1.5

  Curatio.
• * 1.6

  Lin mentū.
• * 1.7

  Linimentū.