Book 2
1
The food also must be suitable, acrid, light, solvent of thick matters, detergent: of pot-herbs, the leek, or the cress, or the nettle, or the cabbage boiled in vinegar; of austere things (frumentacea?) the juice of ptisan, taking also of marjoram, or of hyssop, and of pepper, and more natron instead of the salts. Also spelt in grains well boiled with honeyed-water: in the course of the boiling, they should all be deprived of their flatulence, for flatulent things are hurtful to persons in peripneumonia. If they are free from fever, wine is to be given for drink, but not such as is possessed of much astringency, for astringency condenses bodies; but in these the parts are rather to be relaxed. We must also promote the expulsion of the sputa. On the whole the drink should be scanty, for drenching is prejudicial to the lungs, because the lungs attract from the stomach and belly.
1
Let the chest be covered up in wool, with oil, natron, and salts. The best ointment is that prepared of the lemnestis, and dried mustard with liquid cerate; and, on the whole, we are to determine outwardly the fluids, the heat, and the spirit (pneuma). And smelling to acrid things is beneficial, also anointings, and ligatures of the extremities. When these things are done, if the disease do not yield, the patient is in a hopeless condition.
CHAPTER II. CURE OF THE BRINGING UP OF BLOOD.
2
ALL the forms of the bringing up of blood are of an unmild character, not only as to mode, whether the flow proceed from rupture, erosion, or even rarefaction; and whether it come from the chest, the lungs, the stomach, or the liver, which are the most dangerous cases; but also from the head, although it occasions less mischief. For the flow is of blood; and blood is the food of all parts, the heat of all parts, and the colour of all parts. It is dreadful to see it flowing from the mouth in any way; but bad indeed if it proceed from an important viscus, and still worse if it proceed from rupture and erosion.
