Endoxa philosophica & medica

...could be retarded, consists in the skin, which is dry, from which they must be cleaned before they are suitable for making milk.

V.
Is that saying of Averroes not true: that narcotic medicines induce stupor by an ἀρρήτῳ ineffable/unspeakable quality rather than by a manifest one? For who would attribute such great effects of theirs to a simple and known coldness, when they neither cause such trouble as an external numbing cold does, nor, if they have been heated by our heat or in another way, do they lose their power of stupefying, as other external things do? Why would we never feel such a coldness, but rather the vehemence of an associated heat? What else do the histories of the most sharp-sighted Scaliger, as well as the observations of other recent writers, testify? Such as: that hemlock stirs up such violent motions; that mandrake purges with such violence and such heat; that opium inflames the mouth, brings cheerfulness and confidence, and moves sweat? (Which even the distinguished Gesner, the ornament of our country, also observed in the sudorific antidotes of the ancients.) Do not these things alone sufficiently prove that the power of stupefying depends not on a simple and intense cold of such medicines, but on their ἰδιοσυγκρασίᾳ idiosyncrasy/peculiar temperament?

VI.
Since Eupatorium is believed to open obstructions of the liver in a peculiar way by cutting and cleansing, is it not arguably affirmed by certain great men that the herb commonly called Agrimony is not Eupatorium, and that the Eupatorium of the Greeks is one thing, and that of Avicenna another? For they agree in both descriptions and faculties, describing it as an herb of thin parts, with the faculty of cutting and cleansing, along with a moderate astringency, etc.; whereas Agrimony possesses no conspicuous taste or manifest bitterness, except for its astringency.