MEMB. 2. Retention and Evacuation rectified.

I Have declared in the causes, what harm costiveness hath done in procuring this disease: if it be so noxious, the opposite must needs be good, or mean at least, as indeed it is, and to this cure necessarily required; maximè conducit, saith Montaltus cap.27. it very much availes.

Altomarus cap.7. commends walking in a morning, into some fair green pleasant fields, but by all means first, by art or nature he will have these ordinary excrements evacuated. Piso calls it Beneficium ventris, the benefit, help or pleasure of the belly, for it doth much ease it. Laurentius cap.8. Crato consil.21. l.2. prescribes it once a day at least: where nature is defective, art must supply, by those lenitive electuaries, suppositories, condite prunes, turpentine, clisters, as shall be shewed.

Prosper Calenus lib. de atra bile, commends Clisters, in Hypocondriacall melancholy, still to be used as occasion serves, Peter Cnemander in a consultation of his pro hypocondriaco, will have his patient continually loose, and to that end sets down there many forms of Potions and Clisters.

Mercurialis, consil.88. If this benefit come not of its own accord, prescribes Clisters in the first place: so doth Montanus consil.24. consil.31. &229. he commends turpentine to that purpose: the same he ingeminates, consil.230. for an Italian Abbot.

’Tis very good to wash his hands and face often, to shift his clothes, to have fair linnen about him, to be decently & comely attired, for sordes vitiant, nastiness defiles, & dejects any man that is so voluntarily, or compelled by want, it dulleth the spirits.

Baths are either artificiall or naturall, both have their special uses in this malady, and as Alexander supposeth lib.1. cap.16. yeeld as speedy a remedy, as any other Physick whatsoever. Ætius would have them daily used, assidua balnea, Tetra.2. sect.2. c.9. Galen crakes how many severall cures he hath performed in this kinde by use of bathes alone, and Rufus pills, moistning them which are otherwise dry.

Rhasis makes it a principall cure, Tota cura sit in humectando, to bathe and afterwards anoint with oyle. Iason Pratensis, Laurentius cap.8. and Montanus set down their peculiar Forms of artificiall bathes.

Crato consil.17. lib.2. commends Mallowes, Camomile, Violets, Borage to be boyled in it, and sometimes faire water alone, and in his following counsell, Balneum aquæ dulcis solum sæpissimè profuisse compertum habemus. So doth Fuchsius lib.1. cap.33. Frisimelica 2. consil.42. in Trincavelius. Some beside hearbs, prescribe a rammes head and other things to be boyled.

Fernelius consil.44. will have them used 10. or 12. dayes together; to which he must enter fasting, and so continue in a temperate heat, and after that frictions all over the body. Lælius Ægubinus consil.142. and Christoph. Ærerus in a consultation of his, hold once or twice a week sufficient to bathe, the water to be warme, not hot, for fear of sweating.

Felix Plater, observ. lib.1. for a Melancholy Lawyer, will have lotions of the head still joyned to these bathes, with a lee wherein capitall hearbs have been boyled. Laurentius speaks of bathes of milk, which I finde approved by many others. And still after bath, the body to be anointed with oyl of bitter Almonds, of violets, new or fresh butter, Capons grease, especially the back bone, and then lotions of the head, embrocations, &c.

These kinde of baths have been in former times much frequented, and diversly varied, and are still in generall use in those Eastern countries. The Romanes had their publick baths very sumptuous and stupend, as those of Antoninus and Dioclesian. Plin.36. saith there were an infinite number of them in Rome and mightily frequented; some bathed seven times a day, as Commodus the Emperour is reported to have done: usually twice a day, and they were after anointed with most costly oyntments:

rich women bathed themselves in milke, some in the milke of 500. she asses at once: we have many ruines of such bathes found in this Iland, amongst those parietines and rubbish of old Romane townes. Lipsius de mag. Urb. Rom. l.3. c.8. Rosinus, Scot of Antwerp, & other Antiquaries, tell strange stories of their Baths.

Gillius l.4. cap.ult. Topogr. Constant. reckons up 155. publicke Baths in Constantinople, of faire buildings, they are still frequented in that Citie by the Turkes of all sorts, men and women, and all over Greece and those hot countries: to absterge belike that fulsomeness of sweat, to which they are there subject.

Busbequius in his epistles, is very copious in describing the manner of them, how their women go covered, a maid following with a box of oyntment to rub them. The richer sort have private baths in their houses, the poorer goe to the common, and are generally so curious in this behalf, that they will not eate nor drink untill they have bathed, before and after meals some, and will not make water (but they will wash their hands) or go to stool.

Leo Afer l.3. makes mention of 100. severall baths at Fez in Africke, most sumptuous, and such as have great revenues belonging to them. Buxtorf. cap.14. Synagog. Jud. speakes of many ceremonies amongst the Jews in this kind; they are very superstitious in their bathes, especially women.

Naturall Bathes are praised by some, discommended by others; but it is in a divers respect. Marcus de Oddis in Hipp. affect. consulted about Baths, condemns them for the heat of the liver, because they dry too fast; and yet by and by in another counsell for the same disease, he approves them because they cleanse by reason of the sulphur, and would have their water to be drunk.

Areteus, c.7. commends Allome Baths above the rest; and Mercurialis consil.88. those of Luca in that Hypocondriacall passion. He would have his patient tarry there 15. dayes together, and drink the water of them, and to be bucketed, or have the water powred on his head. John Baptista Silvaticus cont.64. commends all the Baths in Italy, and drinking of their water, whether they be Iron, Allome, Sulphur; so doth Hercules de Saxonia. But in that they cause sweat, and dry so much, he confines himself to Hypocondriacall melancholy alone, excepting that of the head, and the other.