CELSUS

has been poured out, it causes fear not without reason. And it is among the causes for fear if there is no feeling of corrosives in the wound. But just as fortune decides these things one way or another, so it is the physician's duty to strive to find health. 3. Therefore, as often as he dresses the ulcer, if the fluid seems to need checking, he ought to wash it with wine mixed with rainwater or with water in which lentils have been cooked; if it needs cleansing, with honey-wine; and again to apply the same dressings. When the fluid now seems to be checked, and the ulcer is clean, it will be appropriate to encourage the growth of flesh, and to bathe the wound with an equal proportion of wine and honey, and to place over it a sponge dipped in wine and rose oil. 4. Although the flesh is encouraged by these means, nevertheless (as I have also said elsewhere) a regimen contributes more to it; that is, once the fevers have ceased and the desire for food has returned, the bath should be rare, the daily movement gentle, and the food and drink suitable for making flesh. All these things also follow the rupture of suppuration through medicaments: but because it is difficult to cure a great evil without the knife, they have been reserved for this place.

4. Against fistulae abnormal passages or tracts in the body also, if they penetrate deeper so that a collyrium a medicated bougie or suppository cannot be let down to the ends, if they are tortuous, if they are multiple, there is more protection in the hand meaning: manual surgery than in medicaments; and there is less work if they run transversely under the skin than if they tend directly inwards.—Therefore, if a fistula is transverse under the skin, a probe ought to be let down and it should be cut above it. If bends are found, these also must be pursued with a probe and the knife at the same time.