~ AND ENGLISH PHYSICIAN ENLARGED. 
209 
CHAPTER XII. 
Of Poultices. 
1, Povxitices are those kind of things 
which the Latins call Cataplasmata, and 
our learned fellows, that if they can read 
English, that’s all, call them Cataplasms, 
because “tis a crabbed word few under- 
stand ; it is indeed a very fine kind of medi- 
cine to ripen sores. 
2. They are made of herbs and roots, 
fitted for the disease, and members af- 
flicted, being chopped small, and boiled in 
water almost to a jelly; then by adding a 
little barleymeal, or meal of lupins, and a 
little oil, or rough sweet suet, which I hold 
to be better, spread upon a cloth and apply 
to the grieved places. 
3. Their use is to ease pain, to break 
Sores, to cool inflammations, to dissolve 
hardness, to ease the spleen, to concoct 
humours, and dissipate swellings. 
4. I beseech you take this caution along 
with you: Use no poultices (if you can help 
it) that are of an healing nature, before 
you have first cleansed the body, because 
they are subject to draw the humours to 
them from every part of the body. 
CHAPTER XIII. 
Of Troches. 
1. Tue Latins call them Placentula, or 
little cakes, and the Greeks Prochikois, 
Kukliscoi, and Artiscoi; they are usually 
little round flat cakes, or you may make 
them square if you will. 
2. Their first invention was,that powders 
being so kept might resist the intermission 
of air, and so endure pure the longer. 
3. Besides, they are easier carried in the 
Pockets of such as travel; as many a man 
(for example) is forced to travel whose 
Stomach is too cold, or at least not so hot as 
it should be, which is most proper, for the 
is never cold till a man be dead; 
in such a case, it is better to carry troches 
of wormwood, or galangal, in a paper in 
his pocket, than to lay a gallipot along 
with him. 
4, They are made thus; At night when 
you go to bed, take two drams of fine gum 
tragacanth; put it into a gallipot, and put 
half a quarter of a pint of any distilled 
water fitting for the purpose you would 
make your troches for to cover it, and the 
next morning you shall find it in such a 
jelly as the physicians call mucilage; With 
this you may (with a little pains taken) 
make a powder into a paste, and that paste. 
into cakes called troches. 
5. Having made them, dry them in the 
shade, and keep them in a pot for your 
use. 
CHAPTER XIv. 
Of Pills. 
1. Tuey are called Pilule, because they 
resemble little balls; the Greeks call them 
Catapotia. 
2. It is the opinion of modern physicians, 
that this way of making medicines, was 
invented only to deceive the palate, that 
so by swallowing them down whole, the 
bitterness of the medicine might not be 
perceived, or at least it might not be unsuf- 
ferable: and indeed most of their pills, 
though not all, are very bitter. 
3. I am of a clean contrary opinion to 
this. I rather think they were done up in 
this hard form, that so they might be the 
longer in digesting; and my opinion is 
grounded upon reason too, not upon fancy, 
or hearsay. The first invention of pills was 
to purge the head, now, as I told you before, 
such infirmities as lie near the passages 
were best removed by decoctions, because _ 
they pass to the grieved part soonest; so 
here, if the infirmity lies in the head, or _ 
