Prognosticon

in the third of the third [book] writing we believe, must be boiled with vinegar, oil, and brine, to use the vocabulary of physicians. Vinegar also, then, especially for choleric and phlegmatic people, we sometimes proceed with. For it benefits the former by heating, and the latter by extinguishing. For melancholics, it does not harm by exaggerating black bile, as Avicenna in the second Canon has handed down to us. But the drink should be watered wine, that is, light and clear, which indeed is greatly assimilated to water, as Galen testifies on the third book of On the Regimen of Acute Diseases, both in choler and in substance. A slight astringency is manifested in it, and it softens the humors, and cuts them, and corroborates a weak virtue; finally, we discard entirely horrible accidents of the mind, by which every virtue is prostrated, among the number of which is anger, by which the body is inflamed. And this dries up vehemently through sadness; let it be more cautiously shunned than viper blood. In the temperament of manners, therefore, is the preservation of health of the soul and likewise the body. But if by chance some purging of cachexias should be necessary for us, we first warn that we should prepare the humors themselves for easier expulsion with syrups that digest them. Whence Hippocrates: "When one wishes to purge bodies, it is necessary to make them fluid." Which if any physician neglects and intends only towards medicine, to use the words of Galen, he renders the humors difficult and angustious, not without many twistings, perturbations, and dizzinesses, and also disordered pulses and similar things. But if the material should infect the sick person with a certain madness, so that he could find no place of rest, and this is either by merit of a manifest quality, as in choleric and hot and most subtle material, lacerating the members greatly, or by merit of an occult quality, as is accustomed to happen in poisonous material, then the physician, having denied delays, should gird himself immediately for purging. Whence Hippocrates: "To medicate by digesting and moving, not [when the humors are] raw, nor in the beginnings, unless they are [dangerous]." This is also observed if the material by its excessive quantity should threaten a danger of suffocation, or if the disease should be most acute, as if it were synanche, apoplexy, and that kind of disease. Hence that saying of Hippocrates: "To medicate in very acute cases, if it is expedient, to delay in such evils is bad." Nor should it be ignored that there are four humors according to physicians: Blood, Choler, Phlegm, and Melancholy, which Aristotle, with the exception of blood, calls superfluities. We will briefly run through the signs of the humors. The signs, therefore, of the dominion of blood are these: strength of pulse, repletion of the veins, heaviness of the head, redness of the eyes, a thick red vein, sweetness of the saliva. Also, in the hour of repletion, sometimes blood flows from the nostrils and gums. The signs of the abundance of choler are these: the velocity of the pulse and its hardness, a subtle,