Apotherapeia iatrikē

Decorative drop cap letter V featuring a profile portrait of a figure in a landscape.While among the affections of the intestines, that which is bestowed by the Greeks with the name kōlikē odynē colic pain is the most grave and most frequent in these regions, if I take up a disquisition upon it, by God original: "oūr ϑeō" (with God's aid), I judge that I will do nothing alien to my purpose. Therefore, I shall treat briefly of COLIC PAIN properly so called, as it is the most frequent.

FIRST THESIS.

This affection, according to Pliny Pliny the Elder, Roman naturalist (book 26, chapter 1), crept in during the first principate of Tiberius Caesar, and no one prior to the Emperor himself was afflicted by this, as Scribonius Largus also testifies. We maintain, however, that it was not at all unknown to the ancients, as is evident from Hippocrates (6 Epidemics, part 4, Aphorism 3).

II.

Colic pain is described to us thus: that it is a vehement pain of the colon intestine, accompanied by the retention of feces.

III.

By Paul Paul of Aegina, Byzantine physician, it is called kōlikē diathesis colic disposition; by Celsus, pain of the colon and disease of the fuller intestine; by others, colic passion, from kōlasthai being hindered, whence it was called "torment" by the ancients; or it takes its name from the place it primarily occupies.

IV.

For the place of the affection is the large intestine, and for some, the small intestine as well; and again, the cause of the pain has its seat either in the cavity of the intestines or within their tunics.