De anodinis medicamentis eorumque causis et usibus Physica & Medica consideratio in Theses aliquot digesta

XVI.

Furthermore, refrigeration is not stupor, but sometimes exists as its cause; nor does it agree so much with the resolution of the nerves as with their spasm. But how there could be insensibility, when stupor itself is a sensible [state], I do not perceive.

XVII.

The powers of stupefying things.

Galen, On Affected Parts, 6, chapter 5.

The powers of stupefying things are partly manifest, partly hidden. The manifest are those which make [parts] stupid by refrigerating, constricting, or filling the nerves, such as water, lettuce, purslane, sedum, etc. The hidden are those which transmit certain insensible species, such as the Salamander, Mercury, and the torpedo fish, which, according to Galen's opinion, when it presses the fisherman himself with the tip of a spear or trident, through the pores of the spear by transmitted spirits, suddenly renders him stupid and torpid.

XVIII.

To this, we also refer opium, meconium, and sleep-inducing nightshade, and the oil of the torpedo; the stupefying power of which many, following Galen, too pertinaciously reduce to the first and second qualities of the elements.

XIX.

For if a scruple of opium brings on stupor for those suffering from gout by reason of coldness and humidity, why does not even an amphora of water do that? Which is an element that is actually cold and humid, while opium is a certain mixture, and exists cold only by potentiality.

XX.

If it happens by reason of constriction, as not a few have thought, why do we not advise that the joints of the gouty should be compressed with a tie? Indeed, the gouty pain is exacerbated by the lightest touch of the fingers, so far is it from being able to be calmed by binding.