ries, cumminseed, aniseed, melilot, and add to it
half an ounce of diacatholicon; two drachms of hiera piera, an ounce
each of honey and oil and a drachm and a half of sol. nitre. The patient
must abstain from salt, acid and windy food.

* * * * *

CHAPTER V

_The false Courses, or Whites._

From the womb, not only the menstruous blood proceeds, but many
evacuations, which were summed up by the ancients under the title of
_rhoos gunaikeios_,[6] which is the distillation of a variety of corrupt
humours through the womb, which flow from the whole body or a part of
it, varying both in courses and colour.

CAUSE.

The cause is either promiscuously in the whole body, by a cacochymia; or
weakness of it, or in some of its parts, as in the liver, which by a
weakness of the blood producing powers, cause a production of corrupt
blood, which then is reddish. Sometimes, when the fall is sluggish in
its action, and does not get rid of those superfluities engendered in
the liver, the matter is yellowish. Sometimes it is in the spleen when
it does not cleanse the blood of the dregs and rejected particles, and
then the matter which flows forth is blackish. It may also come from a
cold in the head, or from any other decayed or corrupted member, but if
the discharge be white, the cause lies either in the stomach or loins.
In the stomach, by some crude substance there, and vitiated by grief,
melancholy or some other mental disturbance; for otherwise, if the
matter were only crude phlegm and noways corrupt, being taken into the
liver it might be converted into the blood; for phlegm in the ventricle
is called nourishment half digested; but being corrupt, though sent into
the liver it cannot be turned into nutriment, for the second decoction
in the stomach cannot correct that which the first corrupted; and
therefore the liver sends it to the womb, which can neither digest nor
reject it, and so it is voided out with the same colour which it had in
the ventricle. The cause may also be in the veins being overheated
whereby the spermatical matter flows out because of its thinness. The
external causes may be moistness of the air, eating bad food, anger,
grief, sloth, too much sleep, costiveness.

The signs are bodily disturbances, shortness of breathing, and foul
breath, a distaste for food, swollen eyes and feet, and low spirits;
discharges of different colours, as red, black, green, yellow