CHAPTER IV.

_Of Medicines appropriated to the stomach._


By stomach, I mean that ventricle which contains the food till it be
concocted into chyle.

Medicines appropriated to the stomach are usually called stomachicals.

The infirmities usually incident to the stomach are three.

1. Appetite lost.
2. Digestion weakened.
3. The retentive faculty corrupted.

When the appetite is lost, the man feels no hunger when his body needs
nourishment.

When digestion is weakened it is not able to concoct the meat received
into the stomach, but it putrifies there.

When the retentive faculty is spoiled the stomach is not able to retain
the food till it be digested, but either vomits it up again, or causes
fluxes.

Such medicines then as remedy all these, are called stomachicals. And
of them in order.

1. Such as provoke appetite are usually of a sharp or sourish taste,
and yet withal of a grateful taste to the palate, for although loss of
appetite may proceed from divers causes, as from choler in the stomach,
or putrefied humours or the like, yet such things as purge this choler
or humours, are properly called _Orecticks_, not stomachicals; the
former strengthen appetite after these are expelled.

2. Such medicines help digestion as strengthen the stomach, either by
convenient heat, or aromatic (viz. spicy) faculty, by hidden property,
or congruity of nature.

3. The retentive faculty of the stomach is corrected by binding
medicines, yet not by all binding medicines neither, for some of them
are adverse to the stomach, but by such binding medicines as are
appropriated to the stomach.

For the use of these.

_Use 1._ Use not such medicines as provoke appetite before you have
cleansed the stomach of what hinders it.

_Use 2._ Such medicines as help digestion, give them a good time before
meat that so they may pass to the bottom of the stomach, (for the
digestive faculty lies there,) before the food come into it.

_Use 3._ Such as strengthen the retentive faculty, give them a little
before meat, if to stay fluxes, a little after meat, if to stay
vomiting.