1. We must purge pregnant women, if matters be turgid (in a state of orgasm?), from the fourth to the seventh month, but less freely in the latter; in the first and last stages of pregnancy it should be avoided.
2. In purging we should bring away such matters from the body as it would be advantageous had they come away spontaneously; but those of an opposite character should be stopped.
3. If the matters which are purged be such as should be purged, it is beneficial and well borne; but if the contrary, with difficulty.
4. We should rather purge upward in summer, and downward in winter.
5. About the time of the dog-days, and before it, the administration of purgatives is unsuitable.
6. Lean persons who are easily made to vomit should be purged upward, avoiding the winter season.
7. Persons who are difficult to vomit, and are moderately fat, should be purged downward, avoiding the summer season.
8. We must be guarded in purging phthisical persons upward.
9. And from the same mode of reasoning, applying the opposite rule to melancholic persons, we must purge them freely downward.
10. In very acute diseases, if matters be in a state of orgasm, we may purge on the first day, for it is a bad thing to procrastinate in such cases.
11. Those cases in which there are tormina, pains about the umbilicus, and pains about the loins, not removed either by purgative medicines or otherwise, usually terminate in dry dropsy.
12. It is a bad thing to purge upward in winter persons whose bowels are in a state of lientery.
13. Persons who are not easily purged upward by the hellebores, should have their bodies moistened by plenty of food and rest before taking the draught.
14. When one takes a draught of hellebore, one should be made to move more about, and indulge less in sleep and repose. Sailing on the sea shows that motion disorders the body.
15. When you wish the hellebore to act more, move the body, and when to stop, let the patient get sleep and rest.
16. Hellebore is dangerous to persons whose flesh is sound, for it induces convulsion.
17. Anorexia, heartburn, vertigo, and a bitter taste of the mouth, in a person free from fever, indicate the want of purging upward.
18. Pains seated above the diaphragm indicate purging upward, and those below it, downward.
19. Persons who have no thirst while under the action of a purgative medicine, do not cease from being purged until they become thirsty.
20. If persons free from fever be seized with tormina, heaviness of the knees, and pains of the loins, this indicates that purging downward is required.
21. Alvine dejections which are black, like blood, taking place spontaneously, either with or without fever, are very bad; and the more numerous and unfavorable the colors, so much the worse; when with medicine it is better, and a variety of colors in this case is not bad.
22. When black bile is evacuated in the beginning of any disease whatever, either upward or downward, it is a mortal symptom.
23. In persons attenuated from any disease, whether acute or chronic, or from wounds, or any other cause, if there be a discharge either of black bile, or resembling black blood, they die on the following day.
24. Dysentery, if it commence with black bile, is mortal.
25. Blood discharged upward, whatever be its character, is a bad symptom, but downward it is (more?) favorable, and so also black dejections.
26. If in a person ill of dysentery, substances resembling flesh be discharged from the bowels, it is a mortal symptom.
27. In whatever cases of fever there is a copious hemorrhage from whatever channel, the bowels are in a loose state during convalescence.
28. In all cases whatever, bilious discharges cease if deafness supervenes, and in all cases deafness ceases when bilious discharges supervene.
29. Rigors which occur on the sixth day have a difficult crisis.
30. Diseases attended with paroxysms, if at the same hour that the fever leaves it return again next day, are of difficult crisis.
31. In febrile diseases attended with a sense of lassitude, deposits form about the joints, and especially those of the jaws.
32. In convalescents from diseases, if any part be pained, there deposits are formed.
33. But if any part be in a painful state previous to the illness, there the disease fixes.
34. If a person laboring under a fever, without any swelling in the fauces, be seized with a sense of suffocation suddenly, it is a mortal symptom.
35. If in a person with fever, the become suddenly distorted, and he cannot swallow unless with difficulty, although no swelling be present, it is a mortal symptom.
36. Sweats, in febrile diseases, are favorable, if they set in on the third, fifth, seventh, ninth, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth, twenty-first, twenty-seventh, and thirty-fourth day, for these sweats prove a crisis to the disease; but sweats not occurring thus, indicate pain, a protracted disease, and relapses.
37. Cold sweats occurring with an acute fever, indicate death; and along with a milder one, a protracted disease.
38. And in whatever part of the body there is a sweat, it shows that the disease is seated there.
39. And in whatever part of the body heat or cold is seated, there is disease.
40. And wherever there are changes in the whole body, and if the body be alternately cold and hot, or if one color succeed another, this indicates a protracted disease.
41. A copious sweat after sleep occuring without any manifest cause, indicates that the body is using too much food. But if it occur when one is not taking food, it indicates that evacuation is required.
