When the retentive faculty is spoiled the stomach is not able to retain the food till it be digested, but either vomits it up again, or causes fluxes.

Such medicines then as remedy all these, are called stomachicals. And of them in order.

1. Such as provoke appetite are usually of a sharp or sourish taste, and yet withal of a grateful taste to the palate, for although loss of appetite may proceed from divers causes, as from choler in the stomach, or putrefied humours or the like, yet such things as purge this choler or humours, are properly called Orecticks, not stomachicals; the former strengthen appetite after these are expelled.

2. Such medicines help digestion as strengthen the stomach, either by convenient heat, or aromatic (viz. spicy) faculty, by hidden property, or congruity of nature.

3. The retentive faculty of the stomach is corrected by binding medicines, yet not by all binding medicines neither, for some of them are adverse to the stomach, but by such binding medicines as are appropriated to the stomach.

For the use of these.

Use 1. Use not such medicines as provoke appetite before you have cleansed the stomach of what hinders it.

Use 2. Such medicines as help digestion, give them a good time before meat that so they may pass to the bottom of the stomach, (for the digestive faculty lies there,) before the food come into it.

Use 3. Such as strengthen the retentive faculty, give them a little before meat, if to stay fluxes, a little after meat, if to stay vomiting.

CHAPTER V

Of Medicines appropriated to the liver

Be pleased to take these under the name of Hepatics, for that is the usual name physicians give them, and these also are of three sorts.

1. Some the liver is delighted in.

2. Others strengthen it.

3. Others help its vices.

The palate is the seat of taste, and its office is to judge what food is agreeable to the stomach, and what not, by that is both the quality and quantity of food for the stomach discerned: the very same office the meseraik veins perform to the liver.

Sometimes such food pleases the palate which the liver likes not (but not often) and therefore the meseraik veins refuse it, and that is the reason some few men fancy such food as makes them sick after the eating thereof.

1. The liver is delighted exceedingly with sweet things, draws them greedily, and digests them as swiftly, and that is the reason honey is so soon turned into choler.

2. Such medicines strengthen the liver, as (being appropriated to it) very gently bind, for seeing the office of the liver is to concoct, it needs some adstriction, that so both the heat and the humour to be concocted may be stayed, that so the one slip not away, nor the other be scattered.