Decisiones praecipuorum aliquot aporēmatōn iatrophilosophikōn

Should purgatives kathartika purgatives be given to nursing mothers in the illnesses of infants?

Hippocrates (Book 6 of Epidemics, comm. 5, para. 35) gives elaterium squirting cucumber extract and wild cucumber to nursing mothers so that the milk may be imbued with the strength of the purgatives. Indeed, since those who are in good health hygieinos kai eu ta somata echontes healthy and in good physical condition (under which category we rightly include nursing mothers) find it difficult to be purged pharmakeusthai ergodeis (2 Aphorisms 36, 37), they will certainly be vexed by dizziness and griping pains, accompanied by fainting and loss of spirit (Hippocrates, book On the Use of Hellebore). For Nature is irritated in vain. But if the body finds a pharmakon drug, especially a ekkoprotikon purgative/laxative, in the sediment produced from a bad mixture of humors kakochymia bad humors or from an abundance of humors plethora overfullness toward the spaciousness of the vessels containing the humors, will it not act upon the mother rather than the infant? Not to mention the greater disturbance of humors from continuous use and the danger of the eruption of menses (in which sense elaterion is to be understood as an agitator in Gaza’s translation of Theophrastus, as a violent abortifacient). There is no one, we believe, who does not see how great the inconveniences resulting from this can be. It is therefore safer, in the constriction of the bowels and bad humors of infants, to cook simple honey or honey of roses into the food, and, if use requires, to add turpentine the size of a chickpea and offer it to little girls like a liquid electuary. In more serious conditions, it is highly conducive to offer a little manna in chicken broth, pure honey, or honey of roses. Or, if necessity presses, the expression of rhubarb and myrobalan; or rather, the honey of Emblic myrobalans, which is prepared thus: Take of the bark of Emblic myrobalans 12, Chebulic myrobalans 6, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, of each 2 drams, mastic 1 dram, rose flowers, aromatic rush, of each 1 part, caraway seeds, fennel, of each 1 dram. Let them be boiled in 3 pounds of the purest water, or chicken broth, for as long as it takes for half the liquid to be absorbed by the boiling. To the strained liquid, add 4 ounces of honey of roses, 2 ounces of honey of violets, or in their place 6 or 7 ounces of the following raisin electuary. Let them be boiled to a proper consistency.