Of drying Medicines

Drying medicines have contrary faculties to these, viz. to consume moisture, stop fluxes, and make such parts dry as are slippery, they make the body and members firm, when they are weakened by too much moisture, that so they may perform their proper functions.

Yet although the members be strengthened by drying medicines, they have notwithstanding their own proper moisture in them, which ought to be conserved, and not destroyed, for without it they cannot consist. If then this moisture be consumed by using, or rather over use of drying medicines, the members can neither be nourished, nor yet perform their proper actions.

Such medicines as are dry in the third degree, being unadvisedly given, hinder the parts of the body they are appropriated to, of their nourishment, and by that means brings them into consumption.

Besides, There is a certain moisture in the body of man, which is called radical moisture, which being taken away, the parts must needs die, seeing natural heat and life also consists in it, and this may be done by too frequent use of medicines dry in the fourth degree. And it may be this was the reason of Galen's writing, that things dry in the fourth degree, must of necessity burn; which is an effect of heat, and not of dryness, unless by burning, Galen means consuming the radical moisture.

The use then of drying medicines, is only to such bodies, and parts of the body, as abound with moisture, in which observe these rules.

1. If the moisture be not extreme, let not the medicine be extremely drying.

2. Let it be proper to the part of the body afflicted, for if the liver be afflicted by moisture, and you go about to dry the brain or heart, you may sooner kill than cure.

Thus have we briefly spoken of the first qualities of medicines, and in the general only, and but briefly, because we shall always touch upon them in the exposition of the other qualities, in which you must always have an eye to these.