28 NATURAL HISTORY. 



sharpness, without astriction : which we find in salt, 

 wormwood, oxymel, and the like. 



43. There be medicines that move stools, and 

 not urine ; some other, urine and not stools. Those 

 that purge by stool, are such as enter not at all, or lit 

 tle, into the mesentery veins ; but either at the first are 

 not digestible by the stomach, and therefore move 

 immediately downwards to the guts ; or else are 

 afterwards rejected by the mesentery veins, and so 

 turn likewise downwards to the guts; and of these 

 two kinds are most purgers. But those that move 

 urine, are such as are well digested of the stomach, 

 and well received also of the mesentery veins ; so 

 they come as far as the liver, which sendeth urine to 

 the bladder, as the whey of blood : and those medi 

 cines being opening and piercing, do fortify the ope 

 ration of the liver, in sending down the wheyey part 

 of the blood to the reins. For medicines urinative 

 do not work by rejection and indigestion, as solu- 

 tive do. 



44. There be divers medicines, which in greater 

 quantity move stool, and in smaller urine : and so 

 contrariwise, some that in greater quantity move 

 urine, and in smaller stool. Of the former sort is 

 rhubarb, and some others. The cause is, for that 

 rhubarb is a medicine which the stomach in a small 

 quantity doth digest and overcome, being not flatu- 

 ous nor loathsome, and so sendeth it to the mesentery 

 veins ; and so being opening, it helpeth down urine : 

 but in a greater quantity, the stomach cannot over 

 come it, and so it goeth to the guts. Pepper by 



