Hippocrates believed in the influence of the imagination of pregnant women on the child in the womb. He forbad nurses to eat food of an acrid, salt, or acid nature, and observed that infants during the period of dentition were liable to fevers, bowel troubles, and convulsions, especially if there was constipation. He mentions thrush as one of the diseases of dentition (_De Dent._). He recommends friction for contracting or relaxing the body according as it is applied in a hard or soft manner. Very fully he discourses on the evil effects of plethora, and recommends purging, emetics, warm baths, and bleeding, for reducing the system (_De Dietol._, iii. 16 _et seq._). He constantly advises gentle purgatives as a means of keeping the body in health. His favourite laxative medicine was the herb mercury. The administration of clysters is recommended; this treatment was evidently derived from the Egyptians. What are called errhines or sternutatories—_i.e._, medicines which, applied to the nose, excite sneezing—were described by Hippocrates as medicines which purge the head. Though he fully describes the effects of baths, he speaks unfavourably of thermal springs as being hard and heating. He insists that the diet should be full in winter and spare in summer (_Aphor._, i. 18). He disapproves of the habit of eating a full dinner (_De Vet. Med._). He condemns the use of new bread. The nutritious properties of pulse in general are insisted upon. He calls the flesh of fowls one of the lightest kinds of food (_De Affect._, 46), and says that eggs are nutritious, and strengthening, but flatulent. He remarks that the flesh of wild animals is more digestible than that of domesticated. He objects to goat’s flesh as having all the bad qualities of beef, which he calls a strong, astringent, and indigestible article of diet. Milk, he says, sometimes causes the formation of stones in the bladder (_De Ær. Aquis et Locis_, 24). Dr. Francis Adams says this opinion was adopted by all the ancient physicians. Cheese he considers flatulent and indigestible. Fishes are light food; sea fish are lighter and better for delicate persons than fresh-water fish (_De Affect._, 46). Honey, when eaten with other food, is nutritious, but is injurious when taken alone.