AND ENGLISH PHYSICIAN ENLARGED. 
385 
faculty, give them a little before meat, if 
to stay fluxes; a little after meat, if to stay 
vomiting. 
at terms 
CHAPTER V. 
Of Medicines appropriated to the liver. 
Be pleased to take these under the name 
of Hepatics, for that is the usual name 
physicians give them, and these also are of 
three sorts. 
1. Some the liver is delighted in. 
2. Others strengthen it. 
3. Others help its vices. 
The palate is the seat of taste, and its 
office is to judge what food is agreeable to 
the stomach, and what not, by that is both 
the quality and quantity of food for the 
stomach discerned: the very same office the 
meseraik veins perform to the liver. 
Sometimes such food pleases the palate 
which the liver likes not (but not often) 
and therefore the meseraik veins refuse it, 
and that is the reason some few men fancy 
such food as makes them sick after the 
eating thereof, 
1. The liver is delighted exceedingly 
with sweet things, draws them greedily, and 
digests them as swiftly, and that is the rea- 
son honey is so soon turned into choler. 
2. Such medicines strengthen the liver, 
as (being appropriated to it) very gently 
bind, for seeing the office of the liver is to 
concoct, it needs some adstriction, that so 
both the heat and the humour to be con- 
cocted may be stayed, that so the one slip 
not away, nor the other be scattered. 
Yet do not hepatical medicines require 
so great a binding faculty as stomachicals 
do, because the passages of the stomach are 
more open than those of the liver by which 
it either takes in chyle, or sends out blood 
to the rest of the body, therefore medicines 
that are very binding are hurtful to the 
liver, and either cause obstructions, or hin- 
der the distribution of the blood, or both. 
the amber of thean are smelt 
And thus much for the liver, the office of 
which is to concoct chyle, (which is a white 
substance the stomach digests the food 
into) into blood, and distributes it, by the 
veins, to every part of the body, whereby 
the body is nourished, and decaying flesh 
restored. 
eS 
CHAPTER VI. 
Of Medicines appropriated to the spleen. 
In the breeding of blood, are three ex- 
crements most conspicuous, viz. urine, 
choler, and melancholy. 
The proper seat of choler is in the gall. 
The urine passeth down to the reins or 
kidneys, which is all one. 
The spleen takes the thickest or melan- 
choly blood to itself. 
This excrement of blood is twofold: for 
either by excessive heat, it is addust, and 
this is that the Latins call Atra Bilis: or 
else it is thick and earthly of itself, and this 
properly is called melancholy humour. 
Hence then is the nature of splenical 
medicines to be found out, and by these 
two is the spleen usually afflicted for Atra 
bilis, (I know not what distinct English 
name to give it) many times causes mad- 
ness, and pure melancholy causeth obstruc- 
tions of the bowels, and tumours, whereby 
the concoction of the blood is vitiated, and 
dropsies many times follow. 
Medicines then peculiar to the spleen 
must needs be twofold also, some appro- 
priated to Atra bilis, others to pure melan- 
choly; but of purging either of them, I 
shall omit till I come to treat of purging in 
a chapter by itself. 
1. Such medicines are splenical, which — 
by cooling and moistening temper Atra 
bilis: let not these medicines be too cold — 
neither, for there is no such heat in Atra 
bilis as there is in choler, and therefore it _ 
needs no such excessive cooling: amongst 
