ON THE METHOD OF HEALING

...is fixed in the opening of the stomach. It strikes so sharply and causes such a sensation of erosion that it brings on cold sweats, a loss of strength, and fainting. In such a case, the method of treatment will be greatly reversed. All other matters are set aside. One must prepare to thoroughly wipe away the phlegm original: "pituita". In Galenic medicine, this is a cold, moist humor often thought to drip from the brain to other organs..

Of these three factors occurring together, the last one is usually the most urgent. It is rare for the magnitude of the disease itself or the importance of the impaired function to cause more trouble.

A preposterous and reversed treatment.

We usually call any such treatment "extraordinary." Sometimes treating the secondary condition helps the primary one, and sometimes it hinders it. It is helpful in the cases I have just mentioned. The same remedies that remove the secondary symptoms also remove the primary causes. Indeed, the phlegm can be purged from both the brain and the stomach with the same medicine. A treatment where we can heal everything with the same effort is highly desirable.

However, if the treatment for the secondary condition neither helps nor hinders the primary one, the cure cannot be completed with great speed. Instead, it is usually drawn out longer. Even so, the more urgent condition must be resisted. Other issues should not be neglected as long as possible.

When the treatment of the urgent condition directly hinders the others and requires contrary remedies, the other conditions will necessarily get worse while we attend to the urgent one. This makes the later methodical treatment either more difficult or certainly longer. This is still more desirable than allowing the patient's strength to be crushed by the ferocity and lack of restraint of the urgent symptom. A lingering injury is more tolerable than death.

A physician who searches too stubbornly for the standard method in all things often removes the person from this world along with the disease. Consider a case where phlegm flows from the brain into the stomach and then enters the veins. It obstructs them so much that it holds back the bile original: "bilem". Yellow bile was associated with heat and fire; its obstruction and putrefaction caused burning fevers.. This bile then putrefies and ignites a burning fever. Who would be so thoughtless or unskilled that they would focus entirely on the persistent catarrh original: "destillationem". A "distillation" or "dropping" of fluid from the head to the lower body. while neglecting the fever that is killing the patient? Who would not instead hurry to extinguish the burning fever first, using both evacuation and cooling remedies, even if this interferes with the treatment of the catarrh?

The reasoning is the same, and even more obvious, in cases of pleurisy original: "pleuritide". An inflammation of the membranes around the lungs.. This is caused when a cold distillation is sent from the head and gradually enters the membrane lining the ribs. For a more violent symptom that severely tears at or even strikes down the patient's strength...