Decisiones praecipuorum aliquot aporēmatōn iatrophilosophikōn

As is that "cervical growth" paraknēten a type of cervical inflammation/growth which occurs on the skin of the neck with a stench. When infants, however, fall into such a state without atrophy atrophia wasting away that, having lost all their flesh, they barely cling to their bones, it is certain that an obstruction of the vessels is present. In Westphalia and Dithmarschen, which are close to Denmark, this disease is seen as endymō a local term for a wasting condition, which they themselves call "Varum." Our people call it the Mitteſſer, Riekuchen, or the running and consuming worm, named after the natural action that is damaged and the aforementioned symptoms. Old toothless women, under the holy pretext of religion, apply various exorcisms, various incantations, and various gesticulations with the patient’s belt. Furthermore, they smear the area with wheat flour worked with honey and expose it to the heat of a furnace or a dry bath so that a large crowd of little worms, in the form of living ascarids askaridōn pinworms, crawl out from the pores, which are then scraped away with a razor. But since this method of operating not only disappoints most people but is partly worthy of fire and partly of laughter, it is better, once the body has been gently evacuated, to give a powder of earthworms with oxysaccharum acidic sugar syrup or theriac in milk or chicken broth, or the juice of turnips with sugar candy, or the electuary of roses with rhubarb. Then let the child be placed in a bath of fresh water prepared from the ashes of hazel trees and goat’s milk. Finally, after the bath, rub the limbs and joints with oil of almonds or an ointment of marjoram, nightshade, and butter. Furthermore, to dislodge the worms, in addition to the above, let a few grains of the following powder be given in a distilled liquor of grass. Take of stag horn, coral, of each 0.5 dram, rhubarb 12 grains; let them be mixed to make a very fine powder. At the same time, let the pulse of the arms, the mouth of the stomach, the navel, and the entire abdomen down to the groin be anointed with that viscous and foul-smelling fat which exudes from the bladder of a wild boar, if this is suspended in the shade in a moment, having extracted the dart, unharmed with the urine. Finally, in a cough, give the electuary Dia botyros a buttery electuary and oil of sweet almonds recently extracted with sugar candy (with which the chest and the palms of the feet can also be anointed over coals), or give honey of violets to be licked, or goat’s milk just milked with water of fennel or coltsfoot.