Aristotle's works:: Containing the Master-piece, Directions for Midwives, and Counsel and Advice to Child-bearing Women with Various Useful Remedies — Aristotle — John Shaqi
Aristotle's works:: Containing the Master-piece, Directions for Midwives, and Counsel and Advice to Child-bearing Women with Various Useful Remedies
Aristotle · en
_Cures._—The womb being naturally placed between the strait gut and the
bladder, and now fallen down, ought not to be put up again, until the
faculty, both of the gut and of the bladder, be stirred up. Nature being
unloaded of her burden, let the woman be laid on her back, her legs
higher than her head; let her feet be drawn up to her hinder parts, with
her knees spread; then mollify the swelling with oil of lilies and sweet
almonds, or with the decoction of mallows, beets, fenugreek, and
linseed; when the inflammation is dissipated, let the midwife anoint her
hand with oil of mastic, and reduce the womb into its place. The matrix
being up, the situation of the patient must be changed, let her legs be
put out at length, and laid together; six cupping-glasses to her breast
and navel; boil mugwort, feverfew, red roses, and comfrey in red wine;
make a suffumigation for the matrix; and at her coming out of the bath,
give her syrup of feverfew one ounce, with a drachm of mithridate. Take
laudani, mastic, of each three drachms, make a plaster of it for the
navel; then make pessaries of asafœtida, saffron, comfrey, and mastic,
adding thereto a little castor.
The matrix seated in its natural abode, the remote cause must be
removed. If the body be plethoric, open a vein; prepare with syrup of
betony, calamint, hyssop, and feverfew. Purge with pil. hierac, agaric,
pil. de colocin. If the stomach be oppressed with crudities, unburden it
by vomiting; sudorifical decoctions of lignum sanctum, and sassafras,
taken twenty days together, dry up the superfluous moisture, and
consequently suppress the cause of the disease.
Let the air be hot and dry, your diet hot and attenuating; abstain from
all motion, both of body and mind; eat sparingly, drink little, sleep
moderately.
CHAPTER XIII.
OF THE INFLAMMATION OF THE WOMB.
The inflammation of the matrix, is a humour possessing the whole of the
womb, accompanied with unnatural heat, by obstructing, and gathering of
corrupt blood.
_Cause._—The cause of this effect is suppression of the menses,
repletion of the whole body, difficult child-birth, vehement agitation
of the body, falls, blows, &c.