SUBSECT. III.—Compound Purgers.
Compound medicines which purge melancholy, are either taken in the superior or inferior parts: superior at mouth or nostrils. At the mouth swallowed or not swallowed: If swallowed liquid or solid: liquid, as compound wine of hellebore, scilla or sea-onion, senna, Vinum Scilliticum, Helleboratum, which [4236]Quercetan so much applauds “for melancholy and madness, either inwardly taken, or outwardly applied to the head, with little pieces of linen dipped warm in it.” Oxymel. Scilliticum, Syrupus Helleboratus major and minor in Quercetan, and Syrupus Genistae for hypochondriacal melancholy in the same author, compound syrup of succory, of fumitory, polypody, &c. Heurnius his purging cock-broth. Some except against these syrups, as appears by [4237]Udalrinus Leonoras his epistle to Matthiolus, as most pernicious, and that out of Hippocrates, cocta movere, et medicari, non cruda, no raw things to be used in physic; but this in the following epistle is exploded and soundly confuted by Matthiolus: many juleps, potions, receipts, are composed of these, as you shall find in Hildesheim spicel. 2. Heurnius lib. 2. cap. 14. George Sckenkius Ital. med. prax. &c.
Solid purges are confections, electuaries, pills by themselves, or compound with others, as de lapide lazulo, armeno, pil. indae, of fumitory, &c. Confection of Hamech, which though most approve, Solenander sec. 5. consil. 22. bitterly inveighs against, so doth Rondoletius Pharmacop. officina, Fernelius and others; diasena, diapolypodium, diacassia, diacatholicon, Wecker’s electuary de Epithymo, Ptolemy’s hierologadium, of which divers receipts are daily made.