o observe Gilbert's positive recognition of the sphere of percussion
indicated in the passage:

"_Et venter percussus sonat ad modum utris semipleni aqua et venta._"
(f. 250b.)

Ycteritia or jaundice receives equally thorough discussion through
eight weary pages, including the usual polypharmacal treatment.

The spleen, Gilbert says, is sometimes the name of an organ, sometimes
of a disease. As an organ it is spongy and loose in texture, and
attracts and retains the superfluities of the black-bile, expelled
from the liver for its own cleansing. Hence it is a servile and
insensitive organ, and accordingly suffers different diseases, such
as obstruction, tumors, hardening, softening, abscess, and sometimes
flatulence or repletion. The symptoms and treatment of each of these
morbid conditions, arising from either heat or cold, are discussed
with exasperating thoroughness, and the chapter concludes with
the composition and use of various specific remedies of compound
character, bearing the impressive titles of Dyasene, Dyacapparis,
Dyaceraseos (a mixture of cherry juice, honey, cinnamon, mastic and
scammony) and Agrippa.

Scrofulous swellings are carefully considered in a chapter entitled
"_De scrophulis et glandulis._" "Scrophulae and glandulae are hard
swellings developing in the soft parts, as in the emunctory localities
of the veins and arteries, particularly in the neck, armpits
and groins, and sometimes in other places. They spring from the
superfluities of the principal organs, which nature expels, as it
were, to the emunctories and localities designed to receive this
flux." ... "Hence they are often found the cause of scabies, tinea,
malum mortuum, cancer, fistula, etc., and are called glandes.
Sometimes, however, a dryer matter is finely divided and falls into
several minute portions, from which arise many hard and globular
swellings, called scrofulae from the multiplicity of their progeny,
like that of the sow (_scrofa_). The disease is also called _morbus
regius_, because it is cured by kings."

Gilbert advises that these swellings should not be "driven in"
(_repercutienda_), but brought to suppuration generally by emollients
and poultices. When softened they may be opened with a lancet and the
pus allowed to escape gradually, but as this process is tedious, he
prefers the entire removal of the glands with the knife, premissing,
however, that no gland should be cut into which cannot be well grasped
by the