Book 1
11
Wool fumigated with sulphur and moistened with oil in which dill and rue have been boiled, is to be laid on the side. Foment the side constantly with these, and, before the administration of food, apply cataplasms, in addition to the usual ingredients containing melilot boiled with honeyed-water, and mixing therewith some of the fleshy part of the poppy in a boiled state, and sprinkling on it the meal of the manna thuris.See Paul. Ægin. t. iii. p. 241. But if the expectoration be more fluid and copious, we are to mix the flour of darnel, or of hedge mustard, and sprinkle natron on it. But if the disease be prolonged, the pain having become fixed, and the purging liquid, it is to be apprehended that pus is about to form; wherefore mix with the cataplasms mustard and cachrys;Probably the Cachrys libanotis. See Dioscorides, M. M. iii. 78; and appendix to Dunbar’s Greek Lexicon under λιβανωτίς. and if the patients have a feeling as if the internal parts were cold, some vinegar may be poured into it. The heat of the cataplasms should be of a strong kind, that it may last the longer; for this is better than having the heat kept up by renewal of the cataplasms. Let the fomentations consist of salts and millet in bags, or of warm oil in bladders. Every apparatus used for fomentation should be light, so that the weight may not add to the pain. These things moreover are to be used also after the food, if the pain be urgent.
