Purging

Use in the book

The treatment classifications distinguish simple from compound medicines and mild from violent action, as well as upward from downward evacuation. Laurel and asarabacca are “two common vomits”: familiar emetics, according to Burton’s account of household practice. The woman given “a vomit” is a different kind of example. The physician secretly supplies a serpent in the basin to answer her imagined swallowed serpent; the emetic belongs to a narrated management of belief, not proof of the feared event.

Purging is neither an unqualified cure nor merely a cause of melancholy. Excess, frequency and violence may weaken the patient, while the humoral account also treats failure to evacuate as harmful. In the head-melancholy treatment discussion, the later order moves through preparatives to purges, but says not to use purges at all if other relief suffices. Continuing a course must be balanced against giving nature rest. The natural expulsive faculty and Agrippa’s story of a remembered purge producing bodily effects show that evacuation vocabulary extends beyond administering a drug.

The metaphorical uses retain these tensions. Dallington’s Tuscany resembles a body weakened by its supposed cure; Burton’s commonwealth comparison represents beggars as corrupt matter to be expelled, a stigmatizing claim rather than a neutral social diagnosis. Scripture supplies figurative purgatives, with the Augustine-attributed requirement that the sufferer take the draught God has prepared; charity purifies the soul. Clearance by hot irons is an alleged ordeal, not medicine. Finally, tobacco becomes a violent purger of possessions and health: the comic transfer reverses the preceding concession that tobacco may be medicinally useful if suitably prepared, taken at the right time and used as medicine.

Other constructions require a different account. The dog returning to his vomit figures repeated folly: vomit names expelled matter, not a remedy. In the attack on gluttony, eat till they vomit uses the verb for the bodily act. The dry purging medicines listed among topical remedies are intended to promote removal of unwanted bodily matter; Burton places them beside calastick Cataplasms, but this does not establish that dry purging medicines and relaxing poultices are exact synonyms.

Related entries

Alteratives

Clister

Flux and lask

Costiveness

Apophlegmatisms

Helleborism

Stibium

Simples

Evacuation and retention

Defecate

Charity

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 29–31Vomit as expelled matter in the dog proverb about repeated folly.
2. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 14Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
3. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 15Dallington’s comparison makes a heavily burdened state a sick body weakened by its supposed treatment; here purging is the medical vehicle of a political simile, not a literal expulsion of named people.
4. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 16Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
5. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 5Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
6. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 6Burton casts people who beg as corrupt humours, ulcers and boils; his medical analogy compresses Plato’s treatment of poverty into expulsion.
7. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 7Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
8. Subsection 5. The Soul and Its Faculties · paragraph 29Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
9. Subsection 5. The Soul and Its Faculties · paragraph 30Purging is enumerated beside vomiting within nutrition’s expulsion of surplus material, rather than only as a named medical intervention.
10. Subsection 5. The Soul and Its Faculties · paragraph 31Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
11. Subsection 1 Bad Diet as a Cause. Substance. The Quality of Foods · paragraph 39Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
12. Subsection 1 Bad Diet as a Cause. Substance. The Quality of Foods · paragraph 40In a dispute over water, Burton endorses the claim that boiling does not remove the alleged defects; the object is water, not a patient.
13. Subsection 1 Bad Diet as a Cause. Substance. The Quality of Foods · paragraph 41Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
14. Subsection 2 the Quantity of Food as a Cause · paragraphs 12–14Vomit as a bodily act in the attack on gluttony and its Seneca-attributed maxim.
15. Subsection 4 Retention and Evacuation as Causes, and How They Act · paragraph 19Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
16. Subsection 4 Retention and Evacuation as Causes, and How They Act · paragraph 20Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
17. Subsection 4 Retention and Evacuation as Causes, and How They Act · paragraph 21Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
18. Subsection 4 Retention and Evacuation as Causes, and How They Act · paragraph 22Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
19. Subsection 4 Retention and Evacuation as Causes, and How They Act · paragraph 23Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
20. Subsection 4 Retention and Evacuation as Causes, and How They Act · paragraph 24Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
21. Subsection 4 Retention and Evacuation as Causes, and How They Act · paragraph 25Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
22. Subsection 4 Retention and Evacuation as Causes, and How They Act · paragraph 26Burton says both omission when bad humours abound and excessive, frequent or violent use can harm; the image of an apothecary-shop body attacks overmedication.
23. Subsection 3 Terrors and Frights as Causes of Melancholy · paragraph 22Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
24. Subsection 3 Terrors and Frights as Causes of Melancholy · paragraph 23The prescribed medicine’s unpleasantness allegedly makes even its later sight or recollection induce a bowel discharge.
25. Subsection 3 Terrors and Frights as Causes of Melancholy · paragraph 24Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
26. Section 2. Member 1. Subsection 1. Diet Corrected in the Choice of Food · paragraph 24Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
27. Section 2. Member 1. Subsection 1. Diet Corrected in the Choice of Food · paragraph 25The phrase describes wheat refined by removal of bran in a historical diet recommendation.
28. Section 2. Member 1. Subsection 1. Diet Corrected in the Choice of Food · paragraph 26Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
29. Member 4 Exercise of Body and Mind Regulated · paragraph 35Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
30. Member 4 Exercise of Body and Mind Regulated · paragraph 36Scripture is an apothecary’s shop, with remedies differentiated by their supposed actions; the sufferer must take, not refuse, the prepared draught.
31. Member 4 Exercise of Body and Mind Regulated · paragraph 37Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
32. Subsection 2 Help From Friends Through Counsel and Comfort Gentle and Harsh… · paragraph 33Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
33. Subsection 2 Help From Friends Through Counsel and Comfort Gentle and Harsh… · paragraph 34The physician gives the woman an emetic and secretly puts a serpent in the basin; the story concerns relief of her belief that she had swallowed one.
34. Subsection 2 Help From Friends Through Counsel and Comfort Gentle and Harsh… · paragraph 35Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
35. Member 2 Subsection 1 Single Substances That Purge Upwards · paragraph 31Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
36. Member 2 Subsection 1 Single Substances That Purge Upwards · paragraph 32The term introduces the classification by simple or compound, mild or violent, upward or downward action; the next paragraph disputes whether one remedy purges only melancholy.
37. Member 2 Subsection 1 Single Substances That Purge Upwards · paragraph 33Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
38. Member 2 Subsection 1 Single Substances That Purge Upwards · paragraph 34Laurel and asarabacca are described as familiar household emetics; the source’s differing quantities and anomalous Dioscorides book reference remain unresolved.
39. Member 2 Subsection 1 Single Substances That Purge Upwards · paragraph 35Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
40. Member 2 Subsection 1 Single Substances That Purge Upwards · paragraph 8The concession about medicinal tobacco requires suitable preparation and timing and is followed by a fierce condemnation of habitual misuse.
41. Subsection 3 Preparatives and Purgatives · paragraph 31Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
42. Subsection 3 Preparatives and Purgatives · paragraph 32Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
43. Subsection 3 Preparatives and Purgatives · paragraph 33The treatment discussion reserves purges for last and says to omit them if the disease can otherwise be relieved; gentler remedies precede stronger ones.
44. Subsection 3 Preparatives and Purgatives · paragraph 34The preference for downward purging belongs to a course that should neither stop after merely stirring the humour nor exhaust nature through continuous treatment.
45. Subsection 3 Preparatives and Purgatives · paragraph 35Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
46. Member 3. Subsection 1 Treatment of Hypochondriacal Melancholy · paragraphs 43–45Dry purging medicines among topical remedies; their relation to relaxing poultices remains qualified.
47. Member 3 Charity Combining All Three Kinds of Love Pleasant Profitable And… · paragraph 38Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
48. Member 3 Charity Combining All Three Kinds of Love Pleasant Profitable And… · paragraph 39Charity purifies the inflamed soul before elevation and reconciliation; the compressed English is clarified by the adjacent Latin sequence.
49. Member 3 Charity Combining All Three Kinds of Love Pleasant Profitable And… · paragraph 40Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
50. Symptoms of Jealousy: Fear, Sorrow, Suspicion, Strange Actions, Gestures… · paragraph 42Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
51. Symptoms of Jealousy: Fear, Sorrow, Suspicion, Strange Actions, Gestures… · paragraph 43Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
52. Symptoms of Jealousy: Fear, Sorrow, Suspicion, Strange Actions, Gestures… · paragraph 44Richardis is said to have been cleared of suspected adultery through an ordeal, among a series of historical and hagiographical stories.
53. Symptoms of Jealousy: Fear, Sorrow, Suspicion, Strange Actions, Gestures… · paragraph 45Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
54. Prevention Before or After Marriage: Plato’s Community of Wives; Marrying A… · paragraph 38Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.
55. Prevention Before or After Marriage: Plato’s Community of Wives; Marrying A… · paragraph 39The attributed story of Nicholas instead concerns an attempted justification through conduct and doctrine, without an ordeal; the supplied apparatus notes a competing early account.
56. Prevention Before or After Marriage: Plato’s Community of Wives; Marrying A… · paragraph 40Surrounding argument or qualification for the cited medicinal use.

In this edition

“a vomit” becomes “an emetic”, and “two common vomits” becomes “two common emetics”. These renderings recover the medicine noun without implying that the historical agents or procedures are safe. Historical quantities remain unreconciled, and no exact botanical identity is imposed where the source does not establish one. In the full classification sentence, “purging upwards or downward” contributes to the modern “upwards or downwards”, but its verb is redistributed into medicines that purge and acting earlier in the sentence. The evidence therefore aligns the entire classification sentence, not those unequal fragments alone.

Purging is retained where the surrounding medical or political imagery explains it. Elsewhere purge becomes cleanse, thoroughly removed, purifying or cleared, depending on its object and purpose. The natural-expulsion list keeps purging beside vomiting, and the tobacco passage retains purger to preserve the pun. These local choices do not erase the common idea of removal or cleansing.

dry purging medicine

Printed “dry purging medicines” (English; phrase).

A dry medicinal preparation intended to promote removal of unwanted bodily matter.

Here: The phrase occurs in the topical or external remedies discussion, beside relaxing poultices.

Context: Burton attributes the prescription to Octavius Horatianus; his or does not establish exact equivalence with calastick Cataplasms.

Source: original body

Source and modern wording: dry purging medicines

Word and construction: The complete phrase is retained; purging gives the intended evacuating action, without specifying an oral upward or downward administration.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Melangoga

Printed “Melangoga” (Latin-derived medical term; family).

A medicine intended to evacuate the melancholy humour or black bile.

Here: The term introduces the classification by simple or compound, mild or violent, upward or downward action; the next paragraph disputes whether one remedy purges only melancholy.

Context: Burton’s classification followed by disagreement among authorities.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Melangoga, or melancholy purgin medicines

Modern rendering: Melangoga, medicines that purge melancholy

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies a medicine intended to evacuate the melancholy humour or black bile in this expression.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

purgative

Printed “purgatives” (English; lemma).

A figurative remedy for removing an affliction or corruption of the mind.

Here: Scripture is an apothecary’s shop, with remedies differentiated by their supposed actions; the sufferer must take, not refuse, the prepared draught.

Context: Burton’s theological pharmacy metaphor, supported by a quotation attributed to Augustine.

Source: original body

Source and modern wording: purgatives

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies a figurative remedy for removing an affliction or corruption of the mind in this expression.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

purge · local use 1

Printed “purge” (English; lemma).

A medicine or treatment intended to evacuate bodily matter.

Here: The prescribed medicine’s unpleasantness allegedly makes even its later sight or recollection induce a bowel discharge.

Context: Agrippa’s story from William of Paris, used to illustrate memory’s bodily effects, not an established causal finding.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a distastful purge

Modern rendering: an unpleasant purge

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies a medicine or treatment intended to evacuate bodily matter in this expression.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Purges” (English; lemma).

Citation key: purge.

Here: The treatment discussion reserves purges for last and says to omit them if the disease can otherwise be relieved; gentler remedies precede stronger ones.

Context: Burton’s direction carries explicit necessity and harm qualifications.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Purges come last

Modern rendering: Purgatives come last

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies a medicine or treatment intended to evacuate bodily matter in this expression.

Sense relation: A further significant local use of this same defined sense; its attribution and argumentative force remain specified separately.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

purge · local use 2

Printed “purge” (English; lemma).

To cleanse by removing unwanted or impure matter.

Here: In a dispute over water, Burton endorses the claim that boiling does not remove the alleged defects; the object is water, not a patient.

Context: Burton’s agreement with historical authorities, not current guidance on making water safe.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: purge or purifie

Modern rendering: cleanse or purify

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies to cleanse by removing unwanted or impure matter in this expression.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “purged” (English; lemma).

Citation key: purge.

Here: The phrase describes wheat refined by removal of bran in a historical diet recommendation.

Context: Burton’s preference for bread within the regimen, not present nutritional advice.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: well purged from the bran

Modern rendering: with the bran thoroughly removed

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies to cleanse by removing unwanted or impure matter in this expression.

Sense relation: A further significant local use of this same defined sense; its attribution and argumentative force remain specified separately.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

purge · purged · local use 1

Printed “purged” (English; lemma).

To remove people represented as harmful from a political community.

Here: Burton casts people who beg as corrupt humours, ulcers and boils; his medical analogy compresses Plato’s treatment of poverty into expulsion.

Context: Burton’s stigmatizing political comparison, partly attributed to Plato; the supplied apparatus distinguishes his elaboration from Plato’s fuller argument.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: purged from a Common-wealth

Modern rendering: purged from a commonwealth

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies to remove people represented as harmful from a political community in this expression.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

purge · purgeth

Printed “purgeth” (English; lemma).

To cleanse morally or spiritually.

Here: Charity purifies the inflamed soul before elevation and reconciliation; the compressed English is clarified by the adjacent Latin sequence.

Context: Burton’s theological praise of charity with a marginal attribution to Bernard.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: purgeth

Modern rendering: purifying

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies to cleanse morally or spiritually in this expression.

Alignment qualification: A present-tense verb is recast as a participle in the modern clause; its moral purification function is unchanged.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

purge · purged · local use 2

Printed “purged” (English; lemma).

To clear a person of an accusation or alleged offence.

Here: Richardis is said to have been cleared of suspected adultery through an ordeal, among a series of historical and hagiographical stories.

Context: Burton reports inherited stories; the alleged immunity to fire is not independently established.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: purged with hot irons

Modern rendering: cleared by hot irons

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies to clear a person of an accusation, here by an ordeal in this expression.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “purge” (English; lemma).

Citation key: purge.

Here: The attributed story of Nicholas instead concerns an attempted justification through conduct and doctrine, without an ordeal; the supplied apparatus notes a competing early account.

Context: Burton’s hostile account through Augustine, not an uncontested biography.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: to purge himself of his offence

Modern rendering: to clear himself of the offence

Word and construction: Purge supplies clear; himself is retained, and of his offence becomes of the offence. No ordeal is stated in this construction.

Sense relation: A further significant local use of this same defined sense; its attribution and argumentative force remain specified separately.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

purge upwards or downwards

Printed “purging upwards or downward” (English; phrase).

To evacuate through vomiting or through the bowels respectively.

Here: The two directions distinguish emetic from lower-bowel action, not bodily posture or the movement of a drink as it is swallowed.

Context: Burton’s formal classification, retained at sentence scope to avoid a false word-for-word pairing.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Melangoga, or melancholy purgin medicines, are either Simple or Compound, and that gently, or violently, purging upwards or downward.

Modern rendering: Melangoga, medicines that purge melancholy, are either single substances or compounds, acting gently or violently, upwards or downwards.

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies evacuating through vomiting or through the bowels respectively in this expression.

Alignment qualification: The original final participle purging is redistributed into medicines that purge and acting in the modern sentence; upwards or downwards alone is not its equal-scope translation.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

purger

Printed “purger” (English; lemma).

Something that drains away or destroys valuable possessions and bodily well-being.

Here: Tobacco’s purgative action becomes a joke about impoverishment and ruin after a limited concession to medicinal use.

Context: Burton’s satirical turn, not a new physical drug category.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a violent purger of goods, lands, health

Modern rendering: a violent purger of possessions, land and health

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies something that drains away or destroys valuable possessions and bodily well-being in this expression.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

purging · Purging

Printed “Purging” (English; lemma).

The evacuation of bodily matter by an induced discharge, especially vomiting or bowel movement.

Here: Burton says both omission when bad humours abound and excessive, frequent or violent use can harm; the image of an apothecary-shop body attacks overmedication.

Context: Burton’s historical humoral account qualified by Fuchs’s warning about weakened strength.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Purging upward and downward

Modern rendering: purging upwards and downwards

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies the evacuation of bodily matter by an induced discharge, especially vomiting or bowel movement in this expression.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Purge” (English; lemma).

Citation key: purge.

Here: The preference for downward purging belongs to a course that should neither stop after merely stirring the humour nor exhaust nature through continuous treatment.

Context: Historical medical direction with its balancing rest requirement; not present advice.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Purge downward rather then upward

Modern rendering: Purge downwards rather than upwards

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies the evacuation of bodily matter by an induced discharge, especially vomiting or bowel movement in this expression.

Sense relation: A further significant local use of this same defined sense; its attribution and argumentative force remain specified separately.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

purging · local use 1

Printed “purging” (English; lemma).

The discharge of unwanted bodily matter, here one expression of the natural expulsive faculty.

Here: Purging is enumerated beside vomiting within nutrition’s expulsion of surplus material, rather than only as a named medical intervention.

Context: Burton’s physiological classification, including other historical waste products.

Source: original body

Source and modern wording: purging, vomiting, spitting, sweating

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies the discharge of unwanted bodily matter, here one expression of the natural expulsive faculty in this expression.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

purging · local use 2

Printed “purging” (English; lemma).

A figurative draining or weakening of a state through actions compared to medicinal evacuation.

Here: Dallington’s comparison makes a heavily burdened state a sick body weakened by its supposed treatment; here purging is the medical vehicle of a political simile, not a literal expulsion of named people.

Context: Dallington’s description as quoted and extended in Burton’s account of discontent.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: weakened so much by purging

Modern rendering: so weakened by purging

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies a figurative draining or weakening of a state through actions compared to medicinal evacuation in this expression.

Alignment qualification: The expression preserves medical action inside a political comparison; it is an adjacent figurative application, not a direct assertion of expulsion.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

vomit · local use 1

Printed “vomit” (English; lemma).

A medicine administered to cause vomiting.

Here: The physician gives the woman an emetic and secretly puts a serpent in the basin; the story concerns relief of her belief that she had swallowed one.

Context: A cure anecdote attributed to Alexander; Burton does not report an actual swallowed serpent.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a vomit

Modern rendering: an emetic

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies a medicine administered to cause vomiting in this expression.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “vomits” (English; lemma).

Citation key: vomit.

Here: Laurel and asarabacca are described as familiar household emetics; the source’s differing quantities and anomalous Dioscorides book reference remain unresolved.

Context: Burton’s claim about country gentlewomen’s knowledge; historical familiarity is not safety evidence.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: two common vomits

Modern rendering: two common emetics

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies a medicine administered to cause vomiting in this expression.

Sense relation: A further significant local use of this same defined sense; its attribution and argumentative force remain specified separately.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “vomit” (English; lemma).

Citation key: vomit.

Here: The concession about medicinal tobacco requires suitable preparation and timing and is followed by a fierce condemnation of habitual misuse.

Context: Burton’s restricted concession within satirical praise turning to denunciation.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: A good vomit

Modern rendering: A good emetic

Word and construction: The indexed form names or supplies a medicine administered to cause vomiting in this expression.

Sense relation: A further significant local use of this same defined sense; its attribution and argumentative force remain specified separately.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

vomit · local use 2

Printed “vomit” (English; lemma).

Matter expelled from the stomach through the mouth.

Here: The bodily material is the vehicle of a proverb for returning to folly.

Context: Burton uses the dog proverb in a moral and satirical argument; it is neither an administered emetic nor a clinical diagnosis.

Source: original body

Source wording: as a dog to his vomit

Original wording: his vomit

Modern rendering: its vomit

Alignment scope: Equal-scope possessive noun phrases in the paired proverb.

Word and construction: Vomit remains vomit; his becomes its, referring to the dog.

vomit · local use 3

Printed “vomit” (English; lemma).

To eject stomach contents through the mouth.

Here: The verb describes the bodily act in the attack on excessive eating.

Context: Burton’s polemical description leads into the Seneca-attributed eat-to-vomit maxim; its rhetoric is not a diagnosis of every diner.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: eat till they vomit

Modern rendering: eat until they vomit

Word and construction: Vomit remains the finite verb vomit; till becomes until, and they retains the plural subject.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.