A rule, less liable to be mistaken, was, that diseases from repletion must be cured by evacuation; and the contrary. Rest is equally the remedy for labour, and labour for indolence; and, in general, medicine consists in adding or taking away, according to the nature of the cause. Every attempt, however, to change a continued habit must be gradual, for every excess is dangerous.

If evacuations cannot safely take place from the most convenient parts, a revulsion must, according to Hippocrates, be attempted, and the nearest emunctories should be preferred; for the discharge, he adds, is not salutary from its quantity, but from its freedom and the ease with which it is borne. When, however, it is the object to weaken, the discharge must be excessive. If the practitioner should not at once succeed, he should not hastily change his plans, but consider whether any thing has been omitted, or, for a time, rest to see what nature will point out. When the patient appears to yield to the disease, he forbids further attempts; but those, he remarks, with an oracular uncertainty, who are not relieved by medicine are relieved by iron; those who yield not to iron are cured by fire; and those on whom fire makes no impression are incurable.

The milder laxatives of the"divine old man" were the juice of the herb mercurialis, cabbage, the leaves of elder, or a decoction of beet root with salt and honey; various kinds of milk, either boiled or in the form of whey. These in larger quantities were sometimes employed to produce vomiting. As assistants to these, he employed clysters and suppositories; and, when more active drastics were necessary, the hellebore, not, however, without the precaution of premising the most cooling diet. He was anxious also that whatever might prevent hiccup and convulsions should be ready, and assisted their quick operation by clysters.

To the white hellebore he usually joined the sesamoid; to the black, the peplium, supposed to be a species of esula, or the portulaca, though by some authors thought to be the papaver spumeum of Dioscorides". We might fill pages with conjectures respecting the present names of these plants, but must leave the question at last in uncertainty. . Hippocrates certainly considers what he styles the white poppy to be a purgative, and Pliny refers a kind of poppy to the genus tithymalus. The peplium seems, from other parts of Hippocrates's works, to be a carminative, and the cummin or the anise seeds appear to be occasionally substituted for it. Other purgatives, recommended by the Coan sage, are the grana Gnidia, the colocynth, the thapsia, the cyclamen, with the flowers and scales of copper, though the last are chiefly employed externally. Scammony and elaterium he commends for pessaries; but the latter was also given internally, as he advises the milk of a woman or a she goat which have taken elaterium, as a purgative for children. It has been-suspected that, in this passage, elaterium is inserted instead of veratrum, which goats greedily devour, and which acts on them as a cathartic. It is singular, however, that the particular purgatives, especially the drastics, are mentioned only in the tract De Morbis Mulie-rum, which is supposed to be from the school of Gnidus, and older than Hippocrates, since no mention is made of aloes, which was brought from India through Egypt in his time.

The head, according to Hippocrates, was particularly evacuated by the grana Gnidia, hippophae, a thorny shrub which discharged a bitter milky juice; the stone magnesia, which is undoubtedly the load stone; and the tetragonum, supposed by Galen to be antimony, but by modern botanists to be the juice of one of the fir tribe, several of which are purgative. In general, Hippocrates used purgatives in chronic diseases; but he certainly employed them in acute ones more freely than the greater number of the more modern practitioners.

The diuretics prescribed by Hippocrates were the leek, onion, mercurialis, wild parsley, etc. with wine and honey largely diluted, sometimes the warm bath. Can-tharides, however, he orders in dropsies; and five, with the head, feet, and wings taken oft", to expel the secun-dines and bring on the catamenia. It is not certain, however, that so many were always swallowed: in dropsies he gave three only.

To purge the lungs a singular method was employed. If there was reason to suppose that an abscess had formed, after a peripneumony, a decoction of different acrimonious plants, with honey, etc. was directed to be poured into the trachea, the passage to which was opened by drawing out the tongue. Galen, however, has long since informed us, that the whole process was taken from the Gnidian school.

The uterus was stimulated by the most active pessaries, clysters, and injections, or by partial vapour baths (incessus) composed of the same ingredients. He attributed much to perspiration; but produced it chiefly by warm diluting liquors, by bathing, and covering the patient with warm cloaks. His ptisans, decoctions of barley of different richness, are often mentioned.

He drew blood by venesection, and by scarifications more or less deep, chiefly near the head; yet he did not repeat the evacuations frequently, lest, by intercepting the current of blood to the head, apoplexy, convulsions, or inflammations might be induced. When the voice was affected, he divided the vein of the right arm; in pleurisy and peripneumony, the internal vein of the side affected: some directions are subjoined, respecting a division of the veins under the tongue, or in the hands.

In inflammations of the chest, he sometimes bled till the patient fainted. He bled topically with cupping glasses, and sometimes directs the necessary size. The lancet, he observes, should not be too pointed, that a free passage may be afforded to the more viscid fluids.

When he wished to alter the crasis of the more fluid, or of the more solid parts, he chiefly employed diet; and he is consequently copious in describing the powers of particular diets as cooling or heating, diluting or drying, as laxative or constipative. A large share of the tract De Victu Acutorum is employed on this subject, where the ptisans again frequently occur.