Peri tōn periptōmatōn tēs prōtēs pepseōs disputatio

91. That [humor], however, is considered in two ways: either as one already generated and flowing to the affected part, or as one being generated and about to flow.

92. We will assist the latter by instituting a good diet according to the quality of the peccant humor, and we will assist the former by either tempering or evacuating the flowing humor.

93. We evacuate either by derivation, through vomiting or phlebotomy, or by purging through the lower passages.

94. We judge it superfluous to describe here which practical means achieve this. That alone is to be diligently noted: that gently astringent things must always be mixed with purgatives.

95. The mode of exhibition will be clear from the injury of either the upper or the lower intestines.

96. The disease itself, namely the ulceration, will be cured first by detergents, then by consolidating agents.

97. Pain that is too urgent and threatens the prostration of strength often indicates the removal of itself first through anodynes.

98. Otherwise, excrements considered as symptoms require no peculiar cure, but once their causes are removed, namely the disease or the external error, they themselves also vanish.

99. Just as health (as we also warned above) is viewed primarily and in itself in the parts of the body, but in the contents (among which we also include excrements, taking the word broadly) only by accident, so also the preservation of health is instituted not primarily by reason of the excrements, but by reason of the parts of the whole body considered both materially and formally.