To open months and haemorrhoids is very good physic, [4281]"If they have been formerly stopped.”  Faventinus would have them opened with horseleeches, so would Hercul. de Sax.  Julius Alexandrinus consil. 185.  Scoltzii thinks aloes fitter:  [4282]most approve horseleeches in this case, to be applied to the forehead, [4283]nostrils, and other places.

Montaltus cap. 29. out of Alexander and others, prescribes [4284] “cupping-glasses, and issues in the left thigh.”  Aretus lib. 7. cap. 5. [4285]Paulus Regolinus, Sylvius will have them without scarification, “applied to the shoulders and back, thighs and feet:”  [4286]Montaltus cap. 34. “bids open an issue in the arm, or hinder part of the head.” [4287]Piso enjoins ligatures, frictions, suppositories, and cupping-glasses, still without scarification, and the rest.

Cauteries and hot irons are to be used [4288]"in the suture of the crown, and the seared or ulcerated place suffered to run a good while.  ’Tis not amiss to bore the skull with an instrument, to let out the fuliginous vapours.”  Sallus.  Salvianus de re medic. lib. 2. cap. 1. [4289]"because this humour hardly yields to other physic, would have the leg cauterised, or the left leg, below the knee, [4290]and the head bored in two or three places,” for that it much avails to the exhalation of the vapours; [4291] “I saw” (saith he) “a melancholy man at Rome, that by no remedies could be healed, but when by chance he was wounded in the head, and the skull broken, he was excellently cured.”  Another, to the admiration of the beholders, [4292]"breaking his head with a fall from on high, was instantly recovered of his dotage.”  Gordonius cap. 13. part. 2. would have these cauteries tried last, when no other physic will serve. [4293] “The head to be shaved and bored to let out fumes, which without doubt will do much good.  I saw a melancholy man wounded in the head with a sword, his brainpan broken; so long as the wound was open he was well, but when his wound was healed, his dotage returned again.”  But Alexander Messaria a professor in Padua, lib. 1. pract. med. cap. 21. de melanchol. will allow no cauteries at all, ’tis too stiff a humour and too thick as he holds, to be so evaporated.

Guianerius c. 8.  Tract. 15. cured a nobleman in Savoy, by boring alone, [4294]"leaving the hole open a month together,” by means of which, after two years’ melancholy and madness, he was delivered.  All approve of this remedy in the suture of the crown; but Arculanus would have the cautery to be made with gold.  In many other parts, these cauteries are prescribed for melancholy men, as in the thighs, (Mercurialis consil. 86.) arms, legs. Idem consil. 6. & 19. & 25. Montanus 86.  Rodericus a Fonseca tom. 2. cousult. 84. pro hypochond. coxa dextra, &c., but most in the head, “if other physic will do no good.”

SUBSECT.  V.—­Alteratives and Cordials, corroborating, resolving the Reliques, and mending the Temperament.