On Regimen in Acute Diseases (app_20-app_21)

There are two kinds of dropsy, the one anasarca, which, when formed, is incurable; the other is accompanied with emphysema (tympanites?) and requires much good fortune to enable one to triumph over it. Laborious exertion, fomentation, and abstinence (are to be enjoined). The patient should eat dry and acrid things, for thus will he pass the more water, and his strength be kept up. If he labors under difficulty of breathing, if it is the summer season, and if he is in the prime of life, and is strong, blood should be abstracted from the arm, and then he should eat hot pieces of bread, dipped in dark wine and oil, drink very little, and labor much, and live on well-fed pork, boiled with vinegar, so that he may be able to endure hard exercises.

Those who have the inferior intestines hot, and who pass

acrid and irregular stools of a colliquative nature, if they can bear it, should procure revulsion by vomiting with hellebore; but if not, should get a thick decoction of summer wheat in a cold state, lentil soup, bread cooked with cinders, and fish, which should be taken boiled if they have fever, but roasted if not feverish; and also dark-colored wine if free of fever; but otherwise they should take the water from medlars, myrtles, apples, services, dates, or wild vine. If there be no fever, and if there be tormina, the patient should drink hot asses’ milk in small quantity at first, and gradually increase it, and linseed, and wheaten flour, and having removed the bitter part of Egyptian beans, and ground them, sprinkle on the milk and drink; and let him eat eggs half-roasted, and fine flour, and millet, and perl-spelt (chondrus) boiled in milk;—all these things should be eaten cold, and similar articles of food and drink should be administered.