Aphorisms of Hippocrates

tions of lochia after birth: but properly it is the evacuation of those humors which are in a vice by quality. For humors
+ { are in a vice in four ways: by quality, by quantity, by mixture, and by forces, and by the corruption of their own substance. Purgation is twofold: universal and particular. And each is threefold: critical, symptomatic, and artificial. The critical is done by vomiting, sweats, the flux of urine, hemorrhage, and dejections. Universal purgation is when one or more humors are equably drawn out from the whole body. Particular is when a part of the body deposits its excrements: such as the brain through the nostrils, palate, and ears. Artificial purgation is that which is done by artificial induction. This artificial one is prescribed for four ends: for the evacuation of a circumfluent humor; for revulsion, when we recall a humor to where it is running from; or for derivation, as when a humor is carried through places that are inconvenient as an outcome, as if the nostrils were besieged by an ulcer, we will lead the matter flowing there into the mouth: finally, for co-effusion, as if from an imperfect crisis the morbific matter is restorable, to which nature is not equal, we offer it helping hands, that is, we finish what it began by moving the bowels: or if it has attempted that evacuation through the womb, by provoking the menses. Understand the same regarding sweats, the flux of the nostrils, and the leading of urine.

2. By which the humor is excluded which was in a vice in the whole body, whether they are carried critically or symptomatically. For whatever happens without artificial operation is said to happen of its own accord.

3. This is, if the humor is excluded which is in a vice, so that no reason is desired in the humor of quality, of quantity, of the time of excreting (as if on a critical day), and of the mode. For then that exclu-