CHAPTER IX.

_Of suppuring Medicines._


These have a great affinity with emolients, like to them in
temperature, only emolients are somewhat hotter.

Yet is there a difference as apparent as the sun when he is upon the
meridian, and the use is manifest. For,

Emolients are to make hard things soft, but what suppures, rather makes
a generation than an alteration of the humour.

Natural heat is the efficient cause of suppuration, neither can it be
done by any external means.

Therefore such things are said to suppure, which by a gentle heat
cherish the inbred heat of man.

This is done by such medicines which are not only temperate in heat,
but also by a gentle viscosity, fill up or stop the pores, that so the
heat of the part affected be not scattered.

For although such things as bind hinder the dissipation of the spirits,
and internal heat, yet they retain not the moisture as suppuring
medicines properly and especially do.

The heat then of suppuring medicines is like the internal heat of our
bodies.

As things then very hot, are ingrateful either by biting, as Pepper,
or bitterness: in suppuring medicines, no biting, no binding, no
nitrous quality is perceived by the taste, (I shall give you better
satisfaction both in this and others, by and by.)

For reason will tell a man, that such things hinder rather than help
the work of nature in maturation.

Yet it follows not from hence, that all suppuring medicines are
grateful to the taste, for many things grateful to the taste provokes
vomiting, therefore why may not the contrary be?

The most frequent use of suppuration is, to ripen _Phlegmonæ_, a
general term physicians give to all swellings proceeding of blood,
because nature is very apt to help such cures, and physic is an art to
help, not to hinder nature.

The time of use is usually in the height of the disease, when the flux
is stayed, as also to ripen matter that it may be the easier purged
away.