in the spring and summer. And this distemper, when moderate, is cured with difficulty; when violent, it cannot be cured at all. Every pain also, which moves upward, yields less to medicine. If the breasts of a pregnant woman have shrunk suddenly, there is danger of a miscarriage. In a woman that has milk, and has neither had a child, nor is pregnant, the menses are suppressed. A quartan ague in the summer is short, but in the autumn commonly long; especially that, which has come on, when the winter was approaching. If there has been an hæmorrhage followed with madness and convulsions, there is danger of death. Also if a convulsion has seized a person purged by medicines and still empty; or if the extremities are cold in the time of great pain. Nor does a person return to life, who has been hanged, and taken down with a frothing mouth. A black and sudden discharge of the belly, like black blood, whether it be attended with a fever or not, is pernicious. CHAP. IX. OF THE CURE OF DISEASES. Having considered those signs, which may give us hope or fear, we must proceed to the methods of curing diseases. Now these are divided into the general and particular: the general, which relieve several distempers, the particular, which are confined to single disorders. I shall first treat of the general. But there are some of those, that not only support the sick, but conduce to the preservation of the healthy, others are made use of in sickness only. Now every thing that assists the body, either evacuates somewhat, or adds, or draws, or restrains, or cools, or heats, and at the same time either hardens, or mollifies. Some things also are useful not in one way only, but even in two, that are not contrary to each other. An evacuation is made by bleeding, cupping, purging, vomiting, friction, gestation, and all exercise of the body, abstinence and sweat. Of these I shall now treat. CHAP. X. OF BLEEDING.