The Complete Herbal To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic.

CHAPTER IV.

Chapter 26343 wordsPublic domain

_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.