De tabe et phthisi pronunciata

anxiety, anger, grief, sadness, and cares—expressed by the Greeks with the harmonious term melancholia melancholy—and if there are any others that extenuate the body, should be uniquely avoided. Moderate exercise undertaken for the sake of innate heat, however, is not to be disapproved.

LX.
In general, for emaciated and wasting bodies, baths of fresh water, temperate or tepid, are wonderfully conducive, since they bathe and as it were bedew the solid parts with useful moisture. Frictions are also beneficial, moderate, soft, and gentle, by which the skin, with blood moderately aroused and moved through the habit of the body, receives increase and is lifted. Also, soft gestations and carriages without vehement shaking and tearing of the body are helpful.

LXI.
But when bodies are wasting away, not only emptied by a flux, but also constricted by suppressed passages, one must provide for both, so that the body receives no detriment, and is preserved and rescued from extreme destruction.

LXII.
It is decreed by the oracle of Hippocrates that those prone to phthisis are not to be purged.

LXIII.
Those who are endowed with a dry and sapless habit of the body tolerate kenomata evacuations, safeguards, and purgations with difficulty and trouble. Nevertheless, so that humors may not be lured to the vital parts, with the matter flowing, the belly should be emptied by a gentle cathartic, and blood should be let from the liver vein or that vein which is situated between the little and ring finger, especially if there is a hotter dyscrasia bad temperament, or if the reopening of some vein is feared, provided the strength allows it.

LXIV.
The scope of legitimate treatment consists in these three things: the cleansing and drying of the ulcer, the conglutination of the same, and the refreshment of the exhausted body and the restoration of what was consumed.

LXV.
In the beginning, indeed, the ulcer must be cleansed and dried, so that what has been cleansed may be purged by coughing: therefore, if accumulated impurities remain or have hardened from febrile heat, those things that soothe, soften, and promote coughing must be mixed with the cleansers, so that the sanious and purulent impurities that emanate from the ulcer may be ejected. For if the sputum is retained, Hippocrates predicts they will die.