De podagra et podagricorum curatione doctrina

71. They are also cured with difficulty in women and children.
This concerns knowledge: what follows is about the cure.
72. The cure of Gout is of either the disease itself or the remaining symptoms.
73. Both are either logical or empirical.
74. The logical cure of the disease consists in observing indications, both common and proper.
75. Common indications are that all occasions by which Gout is excited must be avoided.
76. This is done by duly observing non-natural things, especially food and drink.
77. Especially the moderate consumption of wine, or rather total abstinence from it.
78. And in all these things, consideration must be given to the orifice of the stomach, because all nerves consent to a languid stomach and are tempted by fluxes.
79. Proper indications are both evacuation and strengthening.
80. Evacuation of the matter, either the flowing or the fluxed.
81. The evacuation of that which is flowing is either repulsion or diversion.
82. Repulsion is done either by bloodletting or by evacuating medicines.
83. Bloodletting is suitable for the gouty when instituted in the arm on the same side.
84. But that which is administered in the thumb of each foot is far more effective.
85. The suitable time for this is the spring, at the very hour of the new moon that occurs in the sign of Pisces.
86. Evacuating medicines provide their effect either through the lower or upper parts.
87. Through the lower parts, purgatives draw out the matter, and the use of these is most important in this disease by reason of the matter.
88. However, in cold and phlegmatic cases, some lenient and digestive medicine must be given first.
89. Understand by digestive a milder one, since excessively digesting things thicken the humors by dissolving the thinner part.