Decisiones praecipuorum aliquot aporēmatōn iatrophilosophikōn

In lithiasis (stone), most physicians offer the strongest "purgative" ekkathartika purgatives and "diuretic" diurētika diuretics medicines. With these, in the manner of the most impudent quacks, they promise the fracturing of that stone and its "reconstitution" anasoicheōsin re-elementing/transformation into the first matter, unknown even to the Giants themselves: which not even a duck’s or a toothy raven’s beak, pushed by a surgeon with the greatest force, could break. It is so far from these that they soothe the pains that they actually increase them. For just as medicines inducing the "clotting" thrombōsin clotting of milk separate the serous part of the milk through "stoning" lithōsin turning to stone, and harden the rest (which also happens in the resolving of the thick matter of inflammations, which are forced into an impregnable scirrhus unless "thinning" leptunounta thinning and "softening" malaktika softening agents are provided first): So too do strong "stone-breaking" lithotika stone-breaking agents expel what is "serous and watery" orrhōdes kai hudatōdes serous and watery in the blood through the urine, but thicken the thicker part, and cause it to be converted into stones more readily. (Aristotle, Book 4 Meteorology, ch. 6 & 7; Galen, Book 6 of Epidemics, sect. 1, sent. 6, and Book 6 On Maintaining Health, ch. 16; Paul, Book 3, ch. 45). Hence, a greater inflammation and dyscrasia of the kidneys (Book 3 On the Faculties of Foods, ch. 16), fixed pain of the ureters and penis (Book 6 On Affected Parts, ch. 5), and cruel ischuria; which can sometimes be cured by a catheter, or the curved beak of the Venetians, or the Terlino of Mariano Santo (Book on the Stone of the Kidneys), but more often only by lithotomy (stone-cutting) with a double-edged razor by a surgeon. (Galen, Book 10 On the Composition of Medicines according to Place, ch. 1; and Book 5 On the Faculties of Simple Medicines, ch. 12).

In mortification, Celsus (Book 7, chapter 33), Tagault (Book 1 of Surgical Institutions), Albucasis (Book 2, chapter 89), Maggi of Bologna (Book on the Cure of Gunshot Wounds, chapter 4), Chalmet (Surgical Compendium, chapter 4), and others of their followers advise instituting the section above the affected place in the healthy part. However, Galen (Book 2 to Glaucus, chapter 10), Paul (Book 6, chapter 84), Botallus (Book on the Cure of Gunshot Wounds, chapter 22), and Gourmel (Book 2 of Surgery) advise the opposite. We, whatever Maggi may say, embrace the management of the latter as the safest, which is not exposed to as many symptoms as that former butchery. After the surgeon has strengthened the patient for several days before the section (not, however, by giving narcotics or poppy, whether raw or burned in a pot and cooked in a hollow quince)...