They are of a far more glutinous and tenacious substance.

They differ from things stopping because they do not stop the pores so much, as stick to them like Birdlime.

They have a certain glutinous heat, tempered both with coldness and moisture.

From these plasters take their names.

Their taste is either none at all, or not discernable whether hot or cold, but fat, insipid, or without taste, or sweet, and viscous in feeling.

Their use is to stop flowing of blood, and other fluxes, to cause suppuration, to continue the heat, that so tumours may be ripened.

Also they are mixed with other medicines, that they may the better be brought into the form of an emplaster, and may stick the better to the members.

CHAPTER IX

Of suppuring Medicines

These have a great affinity with emolients, like to them in temperature, only emolients are somewhat hotter.

Yet is there a difference as apparent as the sun when he is upon the meridian, and the use is manifest. For,

Emolients are to make hard things soft, but what suppures, rather makes a generation than an alteration of the humour.

Natural heat is the efficient cause of suppuration, neither can it be done by any external means.

Therefore such things are said to suppure, which by a gentle heat cherish the inbred heat of man.

This is done by such medicines which are not only temperate in heat, but also by a gentle viscosity, fill up or stop the pores, that so the heat of the part affected be not scattered.

For although such things as bind hinder the dissipation of the spirits, and internal heat, yet they retain not the moisture as suppuring medicines properly and especially do.

The heat then of suppuring medicines is like the internal heat of our bodies.

As things then very hot, are ingrateful either by biting, as Pepper, or bitterness: in suppuring medicines, no biting, no binding, no nitrous quality is perceived by the taste, (I shall give you better satisfaction both in this and others, by and by.)

For reason will tell a man, that such things hinder rather than help the work of nature in maturation.

Yet it follows not from hence, that all suppuring medicines are grateful to the taste, for many things grateful to the taste provokes vomiting, therefore why may not the contrary be?

The most frequent use of suppuration is, to ripen Phlegmonæ a general term physicians give to all swellings proceeding of blood, because nature is very apt to help such cures, and physic is an art to help, not to hinder nature.

The time of use is usually in the height of the disease, when the flux is stayed, as also to ripen matter that it may be the easier purged away.