Yet I will add one thing: this kind of medicine should be used very moderately and thoughtfully, when there is good reason and the treatment by regimen discussed earlier will not work. I say only what Arnoldus prescribes in his eighth aphorism: “A prudent and godly physician first tries to expel disease by medicinal diet, and then by medicines alone”; and in his ninth: “A person who can be cured by diet must not resort to drugs.”

So, in his eleventh aphorism: “A restrained and wise physician will never hurry to use medicines except under urgent necessity, and even then sparingly.” For, as he adds in his thirteenth: “Whoever takes much medicine in youth will soon regret it in old age”—especially purgative medicine, which greatly weakens the body’s natural powers.

For these reasons some physicians avoid purgatives, or use them sparingly. Heinrich Ayrer, in a consultation concerning a melancholy patient, advised him to take as few purges as possible, “because there are no such medicines that do not steal some of our strength, rob parts of our body and weaken nature,” causing the cacochymia observed by Celsus and others—that is, poor digestion and bad humours throughout the body.

Galen himself admits “that purgative medicine is contrary to nature, carries away some of our finest spirits and consumes the very substance of our bodies.” But this must undoubtedly be understood of purges taken at the wrong time or to excess: they have excellent uses in this disorder, as in most others. No one doubts the value of alteratives and cordials, whether simple or compound. From the immense variety of medicines I find in every pharmacopoeia, physician’s work, herbal and so forth, I will select some of the principal ones.