Compounds, Spirit

Culpeper : Before I begin these, I thought good to premise a few words. They are all hot in operation, and therefore not to be meddled with by people of hot constitutions when they are in health, for fear of fevers and adustion of blood, but for people of cold constitutions, as melancholy and flegmatic people. If they drink of them moderately now and then for recreation, due consideration being had to the part of the body which is weakest, they may do them good: yet in diseases of melancholy, neither strong waters nor sack is to be drank, for they make the humour thin, and then up to the head it flies, where it fills the brain with foolish and fearful imaginations.

2. Let all young people forbear them whilst they are in health, for their blood is usually hot enough without them.

3. Have regard to the season of the year, so shall you find them more beneficial in Summer than in Winter, because in summer the body is always coldest within, and digestion weakest, and that is the reason why men and women eat less in Summer than in Winter.

Thus much for people in health, which drink strong waters for recreation.

As for the medicinal use of them, it shall be shewed at the latter end of every receipt, only in general they are (due respect had to the humours afflicting, and part of the body afflicted) medicinal for diseases of cold and flegm, chilliness of the spirits, &c.

But that my countrymen may not be mistaken in this, I shall give them some symptoms of each complexion how a man may know when it exceeds its due limits.

Signs of choler abounding

Leanness of body, costiveness, hollow eyes, anger without a cause, a testy disposition, yellowness of the skin, bitterness in the throat, pricking pains in the head, the pulse swifter and stronger than ordinary, the urine higher coloured, thinner and brighter,troublesome sleeps, much dreaming of fire, lightning, anger, and fighting.

Signs of blood abounding

The veins are bigger (or at least they seem so) and fuller than ordinary; the skin is red, and as it were swollen; pricking pains in the sides, and about the temples, shortness of breath, head-ache, the pulse great and full, urine high coloured and thick, dreams of blood, &c.

Signs of melancholy abounding

Fearfulness without a cause, fearful and foolish imaginations, the skin rough and swarthy, leanness, want of sleep, frightful dreams, sourness in the throat, the pulse very weak, solitariness, thin clear urine, often sighing, &c.

Signs of flegm abounding

Sleepiness, dulness, slowness, heaviness, cowardliness, forgetfulness, much spitting, much superfluities at the nose, little appetite to meat and as bad digestion, the skin whiter, colder and smoother than it was want to be; the pulse slow and deep: the urine thick and low coloured: dreams of rain, floods, and water, &c.

These things thus premised, I come to the matter. The first the College presents you with is