Yet do not hepatical medicines require so great a binding faculty as stomachicals do, because the passages of the stomach are more open than those of the liver by which it either takes in chyle, or sends out blood to the rest of the body, therefore medicines that are very binding are hurtful to the liver, and either cause obstructions, or hinder the distribution of the blood, or both.

And thus much for the liver, the office of which is to concoct chyle, (which is a white substance the stomach digests the food into) into blood, and distributes it, by the veins, to every part of the body, whereby the body is nourished, and decaying flesh restored.

CHAPTER VI

Of Medicines appropriated to the spleen

In the breeding of blood, are three excrements most conspicuous, viz. urine, choler, and melancholy.

The proper seat of choler is in the gall.

The urine passeth down to the reins or kidneys, which is all one.

The spleen takes the thickest or melancholy blood to itself.

This excrement of blood is twofold: for either by excessive heat, it is addust, and this is that the Latins call Atra Bilis: or else it is thick and earthly of itself, and this properly is called melancholy humour.

Hence then is the nature of splenical medicines to be found out, and by these two is the spleen usually afflicted for Atra bilis, (I know not what distinct English name to give it) many times causes madness, and pure melancholy causeth obstructions of the bowels, and tumours, whereby the concoction of the blood is vitiated, and dropsies many times follow.

Medicines then peculiar to the spleen must needs be twofold also, some appropriated to Atra bilis, others to pure melancholy; but of purging either of them, I shall omit till I come to treat of purging in a chapter by itself.

1. Such medicines are splenical, which by cooling and moistening temper Atra bilis: let not these medicines be too cold neither, for there is no such heat in Atra bilis as there is in choler, and therefore it needs no such excessive cooling; amongst the number of these

are such as we mentioned amongst the cordials to repel melancholy vapours from the heart, such temper and assuage the malice of Atra bilis.

2. Those medicines are also splenical, by which melancholy humours are corrected and so prepared, that they may the more easily be evacuated: such medicines are cutting and opening, and they differ from hepaticals in this that they are no ways binding; for the spleen being no ways addicted to concoction, binding medicines do it harm, and not good.

3. Sometimes the spleen is not only obstructed, but also hardened by melancholy humours, and in such cases emolient medicines may be well called splenicals, not such as are taken inwardly, for they operate upon the stomach and bowels, but such as are outwardly applied to the region of the spleen.

And although sometimes medicines, are outwardly applied to hardness of the liver, yet they differ from splenicals, because they are binding, so are not splenicals.

CHAPTER VII

Of Medicines appropriated to the reins and bladder