Rules for inducing vomiting and laxatives, and instructions on how the attraction of juices occurs with laxatives and emetics

Anyone who wishes to take a laxative or induce vomiting should divide his food into small portions and take the amount of food he is satisfied with for one day several times. You should also take a variety of food and a variety of drinks, because from this circumstance the stomach has a strong desire to expel up or down what is in it. But when unvaried food comes into the stomach on top of other food, the stomach becomes greedy and strongly holds it back, especially if it is in small quantities. As for a person with a gentle nature, he does not need to do anything like that.

Know that people under a good regime do not need to induce vomiting, relaxation and the like, because under a good regime you can limit yourself to lighter measures. Measures such as physical exercise, massage and sauna are often sufficient. Then, if the body of such a person becomes full, it will mostly overflow with good juices, that is, with blood. Then, to cleanse the body, the patient needs bloodletting, and not a laxative.

If necessity requires bloodletting or defecation with such means as hellebore and other strong medicines, then first you need to start with bloodletting, according to the precepts of Hippocrates in his Book of Epidemics and it is true. The same should be done when mucous juices are mixed with blood. But if the juices are sticky and cold, then bloodletting often increases their thickness and stickiness, so in such cases you should start with relaxation.

In general, if the juices are equal, then bloodletting must be done first, but if afterward one juice predominates, an evacuation must be performed. If the juices are unequal, then first empty the excess juice so that they are all equal, and then do the bloodletting. If someone is given medicine before bloodletting and then the need for bloodletting arises, then postpone it for a few days.

If a person who has recently had bloodletting needs to have a bowel movement, it is best to give him medicine. Often people taking necessary medications and then having their blood opened cause fever and anxiety. If the latter do not subside with the help of sedatives, then you should know that bloodletting should have preceded it.

Not all emptying becomes necessary due to excessive overfilling. Sometimes it is required due to the great strength of the disease and an overflow of qualitative rather than quantitative.

Often, an improved regimen makes the bloodletting required by the time of year unnecessary.

It often happens that it is necessary to perform an emptying, but some obstacle appears to this. In this case, there is no other remedy except fasting, sleeping and taking measures against the bad nature caused by overflow.

There is also a type of emptying that is done out of precaution. For example, those who constantly suffer from gout, epilepsy or other diseases need it at a certain time, especially in the spring. A similar precaution should be taken even before this time and perform the type of bowel movement that is intended for the given disease, whether it be bloodletting or laxation.

Sometimes the use of external drying agents and suction medications produces emptying. This applies to people suffering from dropsy.

Sometimes things force you to use a medicine that is similar in quality to the juice being removed. For example, when emptying bile, scammonium is used. In this case, something is added to the medicine that has the opposite quality, but promotes relaxation or does not interfere with it, such as myrobalans. Then, if the nature becomes bad from this, you need to correct it.

Weakening and vomiting, caused artificially, weaken people who have tumors in their insides. If you are forced to do this, then use such remedies as field bindweed, safflower, polypodium, cassia and the like. Truly, Hippocrates says that when cleansing a skinny, thin person who easily vomits, it is best to induce it in the summer, spring or autumn, but not in winter. It is better for a moderately plump person to use laxatives, but if some reason obliges one to resort to evacuation through vomiting, then one must wait until the summer and beware of this measure unless necessary.

Before inducing weakness and vomiting, you should dilute the juice from which the body is emptied, expand and open the channels, because as a result of this the body will come to a calm state.

Know that training the nature to be soft and ready for the desired relaxation or vomiting, carried out with ease before using strong drugs, is a successful measure. Weakness and vomiting are severe, tiring and dangerous for persons with an exhausted soft lower abdomen.

An emetic sometimes turns into a laxative. This occurs when the stomach is strong, or if the emetic is taken on a very empty stomach, or the patient has an upset stomach or a mild nature, or is not accustomed to vomiting, or if the medicine is of a heavy substance and goes down quickly.

A laxative also sometimes turns into an emetic due to a weak stomach, or excessive dryness of the sediment, or because the medicine has a disgusting taste, or the person suffers from indigestion.

Every laxative, when it does not cause a laxative effect or expels what is not yet ripe, sets in motion the juice to be excreted, or distributes it throughout the body. This juice then takes over the body and other juices also turn into it. Thus, this juice increases in the body.

There are juices that are mostly quickly excreted through vomiting, such as bile there are also those that cannot be eliminated through vomiting, such as black bile finally, there are those that sometimes give in, sometimes not, such as mucus.

It is better to give a laxative to a person suffering from fever than to induce vomiting. And in people with flowing juice, such as those suffering from diarrhea, it is difficult to induce vomiting.

Bad laxatives are those that consist of drugs that are very different from each other in terms of time of action, because then the laxative upsets the patient and the first laxative acts before the second has its effect, and sometimes the first laxative removes the second itself.

If a person with a body clean of harmful juices undergoes excessive laxity or vomiting, he will inevitably experience dizziness, coldness and heart anguish In this case, emptying occurs with great difficulty. In short, as long as the medicine removes the excess, the bowel movement is not accompanied by general distress, but when it begins to upset, it means that it is not the excess that is being removed from the body.

When the juice secreted during defecation through vomiting or laxation turns into another juice, this indicates that the body has already been cleared of the juice that needed to be removed. If the discharge turns into grains and a black, smelly substance, then this is bad.

Sound sleep after laxity and vomiting indicates that defecation and vomiting have completely cleansed the body and brought benefits.

Know that if thirst increases during weakness and vomiting, this indicates that they have proceeded thoroughly and completely cleansed the body.

Know that a laxative has an effect due to its attractive force, which attracts exactly the juice that needs to be removed, but sometimes a laxative attracts thick juice and releases liquid juice. This is how, for example, a laxative prescribed to remove black bile works.

The words of a person who says that a laxative generates what it attracts, or that it first attracts liquid things, are worthless. Along with this opinion, Galen unfoundedly stated that if a laxative, in which there is no poison, does not have a laxative effect and remains in the body for a long time, it will generate the juice that it should attract. It is clear from Galen's beliefs that he believes that between the attracting medicine and the attracted juice there is a similarity in substance, which is why attraction occurs. This is incorrect, for if attraction were conditioned by the similarity of a substance, then iron, when one is greater than the other, should attract iron, gold should attract gold, when one is greater than the other in quantity. However, it is not the doctor’s job to go into detail about this issue.

Know that the attraction of juices due to the use of laxatives and emetics is directed along the path where the juices are pushed out, so that they collect in the intestines, and there the nature begins to move to push them out. When taking laxatives, juices rarely rise into the stomach however, if they rise, they tend to be regurgitated through vomiting. Juices do not rise into the stomach for two reasons: the laxative quickly penetrates the intestines when taking a laxative, nature rushes to bring the juices down through the smallest veins of the intestines, because this is closer and easier, but not upward, and what follows the juices pushes them forward, and this sets nature in motion to push them along the shortest path. If the medicine has an attractive power that draws the juice with it, then the expelling power of nature in healthy and strong people still prevails, although the medicine attracts the juice along a certain path.

As for the emetic, it has the opposite effect. If it enters the stomach and lingers there, it attracts the juice from the intestines and causes vomiting due to its strength and opposition to nature.

You should know that most of the juices attracted by drugs are drawn from the vessels but those juices that are close, in the neighborhood, are attracted both through vessels and not through vessels. For example, juices in the lungs are attracted due to their proximity to the stomach and intestines, without entering the vessels.

Know that mostly sucking dry medicines can cause the body to empty various fluids, such as in case of dropsy.