The seven books of Paulus Ægineta, volume 2 (of 3) : $b translated from the Greek: with a commentary embracing a complete view of the knowledge possessed by the Greeks, Romans, and Arabians on all subjects connected with medicine and surgeryPaulus, Aegineta
History
The seven books of Paulus Ægineta, volume 2 (of 3) : $b translated from the Greek: with a commentary embracing a complete view of the knowledge possessed by the Greeks, Romans, and Arabians on all subjects connected with medicine and surgery
Paulus, Aegineta
Medicine; Medicine, Arab; Medicine, Greek and Roman
to strength and magnitude, or indistinct, the stream of the blood failing
also indicates that the strength is sunk), or from the malignity of the
inflammation; for sometimes it will not remit, but the constriction
continues strong. But if none of these circumstances contra-indicate, and
if the patient be in the vigour of age, we may wait until a change takes
place, especially if the atmosphere be mild. But if the flow of blood
stop before a sufficient evacuation has taken place (this happens from
fear, deliquium animi, and coagulum, or too tight an application of the
bandage), we must attend to each of these causes, rousing from deliquium
with strong-scented things, slackening the bandage when too tight, and a
coagulum may be dissolved by pouring in oil, or by rubbing it with the
fingers. The rest of the apparatus for phlebotomy is known to everybody.
But these things apply to venesection at the bend of the arm. When we
would abstract blood from the forehead as for headache, having first
used fomentations, we apply a bandage round the neck, placing a finger
over the windpipe to prevent suffocation, and when the frontal vein is
properly filled we divide it with the point of a lancet or scalpel. In
the same manner we may open the external jugulars for chronic ophthalmy,
producing a discharge of blood with the concave part of the scalpel.
The vessels also below the tongue we open transversely for angina, but
without the application of any bandage. Some also open in like manner
the veins which appear in the great canthi, as for chronic affections
of the head or eyes, in which cases they also sometimes rupture the
vessels within the nostrils either by rubbing them with the extremity of
a specillum, or by tickling them with rough substances. They also open
those behind the ears for the affections about the head; and those about
the top of the thighs, as in affections of the kidneys; and those in the
extremities they also open, after by the application of the ligatures
to the parts above, by friction in the case of the hands, and walking
in that of the feet, the vessels having become distended with blood;
in affections of the spleen opening the vessel in particular between
the small and middle finger of the left hand, and in affections of the
liver those of the right hand; for the evacuation of the extremities,
being from a distance, occasions a more powerful revulsion. In ischiatic
diseases, and those of the uterus, they open the vein in the foot above
the inner toe.
* * * * *
COMMENTARY. We have to regret that our limits prevent us from doing more
ample justice to the sound and enlarged views of the ancient physicians
on this subject, and we must be content with making a few desultory
observations and giving a few extracts.
We have had occasion frequently to remark that Hippocrates practised
venesection freely in various diseases. He has left no treatise, however,
expressly on the subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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