Book 2
2
The articles of food are various in kind like the medicines, but also the medicines are in the food; for neither would it be easy to find all the good properties of food in any one article, nor even if a solitary thing were sufficient for the cure, should one only be used, as one would thus readily produce satiety; but we must grant variety if the disease should prove prolonged. Let the food, then, be astringent and refrigerant in properties, as also to the touch, for heat encourages bleeding. Washed alica; rice added to oxycrate; but if the vinegar excite coughing, the decoction of dates; baked bread which has been dried and pounded down to meal, and sifted. Of all these things a draught is to be made with oil; savory seasoned with salts, and sumach to be sprinkled upon it. And if you wish to gratify the patient’s palate, let coriander be added, for this purpose, whenever it is agreeable, or any of the diuretic and diffusible seeds. Lentil, then, with the juice of plantain, if the hemorrhage be urgent, but if not, we should spare the juice, for neither is it of easy digestion, nor pleasant to the taste; for in these cases we must not give indigestible things. But if you apprehend death from the hemorrhage, you must also give what is unpalatable and indigestible; nay, let even harsh things be given if they will preserve life; wherefore, let galls, dried and pulverised, be sprinkled when dry, and cold lentil: eggs thick from boiling, with the seeds of pomegranate or galls, for the food necessarily consists in the medicines. The drink altogether should be scanty, since liquids are incompatible with a dry diet. These are the proper things, provided you wish to astringe and cool. But if you wish also to thicken the blood and spirit (pneuma), milk along with starch and granulated spelt (chondrus), the milk being sometimes given with the starch, and sometimes with the chondrus; they should be boiled to such a consistence as that the draught may not be liquid. But if you wish to incrassate and astringe still more, let the chondrus be boiled with dates, and for the sake of giving consistence, let there be starch and milk; and the Tuscan far is a very excellent thing, being thick, viscid, and glutinous when given along with the milk; the rennet of the kid is to be added to the liquid decoctions for the sake of coagulation, so that with the milk, it attains the consistency of new cheese: still thicker than these is millet boiled with milk like the far, having gall and pomegranate rind sprinkled on it as a powder. But we must look to the proportions of the desiccants and incrassants, for all these things provoke coughing, and in certain cases, from excess of desiccant powers, they have burst the veins. But if things turn out well, and the blood is stopped, we must gradually change to the opposite plan of treatment, and nothing in excess, for these cases are apt to relapse, and are of a bad character. We must also strive to put flesh and fat on the patient by means of gestation, gentle frictions, exercise on foot, recreation, varied and suitable food.
