Abhomeron Abynzohar & Colliget Auerroys (Medical Compendium)

And some who imagine things that are very childish and strange. As, for instance, a certain man who thought to make a small cake in a well, and had a sack of flour bought, and ordered his servants to throw it into the well and to knead it very well with their feet; which they were unwilling to do. But since he was strong and stern, he took his weapons, and they, being terrified, did his will and threw the flour into the well, but they were by no means willing to enter it. And when the sick man saw this, he entered it himself naked and began to mix the flour with his feet. Then he came out and, having summoned his relatives, ordered that they should eat of it. When they saw this, they feared that he might kill himself and they bound him and brought him to me, and I cured him. And I have seen others who, having a disturbance of the intellect, spoke of things they had never seen and imagined that they had seen them. I also remember when I was with my father, studying medicine before him, I was called to go to the brother of Bentamin, the lord of Seville; and I found him when he had already thought [these things], and death had detained him, and he could not speak nor move himself with local motion; but his pulse did not at all manifest a deprivation of that motion, rather it demonstrated a complexive heat from a hot humor existing in the stomach. I provided for him to drink rose water with the juice of apples, and mint water with a small quantity of sandalwood powder and mastic. And by this he was relieved a little from the sickness, yet that fantastic imagination did not recede. And I could not think what this might be, and I continued to stay with him day and night, and I learned that his sickness was sometimes aggravated and sometimes relieved. Wherefore I surmised that this could not be from anything other than an extrinsic thing, and searching for it with all my power I could not find it. But one day, asking to drink, they offered me a drink in the vessel with which the brother of Bentamin was accustomed to drink, and I perceived in that water a strange flavor, for which reason I abhorred it not a little; and the said water was aromatized with a slight horrible odor, for which reason I did not cease to exclaim strongly, saying: "How can this lord be freed when you are daily poisoning him with a toxin?" Whence one of his ministers began to beg me strongly that I should be silent; and I did not abstain on account of this, because if I had been silent, it would have been a great betrayal. Wherefore it was known that in the water with which they gave him to drink, they were placing rotten and strongly dried meat, pounded and tied in a cloth. And as long as that rotten water remained in the stomach, bad vapors ascended from it to the brain and disturbed the intellect. And all the physicians of that region were working toward his cure, and they were not able to cure him until his brother took him away from Seville, and for certain then those bad accidents were removed from him, since they were doing that with the hope of taking his money. And I saw him after his removal from Seville very well liberated and restored in his intellect; and I recounted this so that it may be a likeness to you that just as the disturbance of the intellect happened to him from the vapor ascending from the stomach to the brain from that water infected by something extrinsic, so a disturbance of the intellect can happen from a corrupt humor continuously existing in the stomach, or from a poisonous humor fixed in the fleshiness of the stomach or in the villi of the same, which indeed will have persisted in the stomach until a bad complexion is fixed and confirmed within it. And when the said complexion is very bad, then an aposteme arises and is confirmed therein; and when it has persisted there for a long time, bad fumosities ascend from it to the brain, and bad accidents are made from them in the brain according to the nature of those [humors]; but that bad complexion is not removed from the brain except with great difficulty and after a length of time. And now I intend to complete the cure of the disturbance of the intellect which is found to proceed from the stomach and its appendages. And this is that you must first begin from those things which have temperance in cooling. And although these may be humid in their complexion—even if the sick person is of a humid complexion—applying with the aforementioned things [medicines] that are entirely styptic and have a slight subtlety on account of the property of the assistance of temperate stypticity to every member, and especially to the stomach. And this syrup also confers: Take of cleaned licorice, 3 drachms; and place it on a slow fire with six pounds of water. After the infusion of the same in the said water for one night, let it boil until the consumption of half of it, and strain it. And add to that filtrate three pounds of the wine of sweet pomegranates, and two pounds of the juice of sweet apples, and one pound of the decoction of strained plums, 4 drachms of the juice of pears, mastic, and aloe wood, of each half an ounce. Grind these two things and pulverize, and tie them in a cloth, and place all on a slow fire with 6 pounds of sugar. And let them boil, skimming them continuously until they have boiled, and let them boil until they reach a thick consistency. And you shall provide him of this every morning, 1 drachm with 1/2 drachm of water to drink; and when he is thirsty during the day, you shall give him of the same to drink, very tempered with cold water. And study in his regimen by balancing him, giving him large pullets cooked with pomegranate wine and apple juice, placing simple water with the same with an equal quantity of that rose water, not placing any of the spices except only coriander, adding some oil with a very small quantity of salt; abstaining from the consumption of sweet things in excess, and from salty things, and from all things gross in their complexion. And of fruits he can eat sweet pomegranates only, and it does not harm him to chew pears after food, licking only their juice. And if you think that in his stomach there is a horrible hot humor, or in its concavity, or imbibed in the substance and fleshiness of it, or stuck or joined in the orifice of the lower gastric opening, you shall provide him to drink half an ounce of aloe. And if he should be of strong power, you shall give him three [parts] with the eighth part of an ounce of scammony and the eighth part of an ounce of mastic with milk water and apple juice, of each. And if the milk has been coagulated with the flower of the thistle, it will be better in this sickness, taking care entirely not to exhibit a laxative medicine until the sickness has been at its strength and height, because a laxative, even if it were rectified and tempered as much as possible, is nevertheless impossible [to use] without, on account of its acuteness and motion, it stirring up and generating a thickness and hardness similar to an aposteme, with the aid of the bad humor which exists in the stomach. And when I say a thickness similar to an aposteme, I intend a thickness which is generated in a member against nature, just as happens in the hands of those who row or sail, from the swelling; and those in whom, in some member, is placed that which generates a swelling, such as is mustard or sinapis, and similar things. And when I say aposteme, I intend a humor or humors gathered in some part of the body, from which the pores of that part of the body are obstructed to such an extent that a pulse is not made in that part as before. And every aposteme is a swelling against nature, but it is not reversed—that is, [it is not the case] that every swelling against nature is an aposteme. And after the strength of the thickness which is assimilated to an aposteme is generated, when a perfect fire is named, or a red gout, then after a space of time its acuteness remits and its redness manifestly diminishes, because when the collection of some humor exists in some part of the body without putrefaction and corruption, then nature intends only its dissolution; but if that collection is with putrefaction and corruption, that happens from natural and accidental heat together which exist in it, from whose action and operation digestion is effected and completed in the aforementioned humor, because natural heat alone does not turn the humor to pus, but [only] to nourishment appropriated to the nature of the member; and so accidental heat alone cannot derive any humor to pus, but makes a species of complete corruption, which corruption nature little by little expels from the member and cleanses and dissolves it; and then the strength of that heat ceases on account of the action of natural heat. And when I say natural heat, I intend the spirit whose foundation is the liver and the heart; and these two heats are guardians and preservers of the whole body, and accidental heat impedes the operations of them as much as it can, and weighs down the body, and saddens it, and fatigues it. And this unnatural heat is sometimes strengthened to such an extent that it makes diverse fevers happen with paroxysms; and some of them are intermittent, and some are continuous, remaining thus until they are freed.