Page:On the Magnet - Gilbert (1900 translation of 1600 work).djvu/56

 of the liver and spleen, think it beneficial in those cases because it removes obstructions, mainly trusting to the opinions of certain Arabians: wherefore they administer it to the dropsical and to those suffering from tumour of the liver or from chronic jaundice, and to persons troubled with hypochondrical melancholia or any stomachic disorder, or add it to electuaries, without doubt to the grievous injury of many of their patients. Fallopius commends it prepared in his own way for tumours of the spleen, but is much mistaken; for loadstone is pre-eminently good for spleens relaxed with humour, and swollen; but it is so far from curing spleens thickened into a tumour that it mightily confirms the malady. For those drugs which are strong siccatives and absorb humour force the viscera when hardened into a tumour more completely into a quasi-stony body. There are some who roast iron in a closed oven with fierce firing, and burn it strongly, until it turns red, and they call this Saffron of Mars; which is a powerful siccative, and more quickly penetrates the intestines. Moreover they order violent exercise, that the drug may enter the viscera while heated and so reach the place affected; wherefore also it is reduced to a very fine flour; otherwise it only sticks in the stomach and in the chyle and does not penetrate to the intestines. As a dry and earthy medicament, then, it is shown by the most certain experiments to be, after proper evacuations, a remedy for diseases arising from humour (when the viscera are charged and overflowing with watery rheum). Prepared steel is a medicament proper for enlarged spleen. Iron waters too are effectual in reducing the spleen, although as a rule iron is of a frigid and astringent efficiency, not a laxative; but it effects this neither by heat nor by cold, but from its own dryness when mixed with a penetrative fluid: it thus disperses the humour, thickens the villi, hardens the tissues, and contracts them when lax; while the inherent heat in the member thus strengthened, being increased in power, dissipates what is left. Whereas if the liver be hardened and weakened by old age or a chronic obstruction, or the spleen be shrivelled and contracted to a schirrus, by which troubles the fleshy parts of the limbs grow flaccid, and water under the skin invades the body, in the case of these conditions the introduction of iron accelerates the fatal end, and considerably increases the malady. Amongst recent writers there are some who in cases of drought of the liver prescribe, as a much lauded and famous remedy, the electuary of iron slag, described by Rhazes in his ninth book ad Almansorem, Chap. 63, or prepared filings of steel; an evil and deadly advice: which if they do not some time understand from our philosophy, at least everyday experience, and the decline and death of their patients, will convince them, even the sluggish and lazy. Whether iron be warm or cold is variously contended by