SECT. XLI.—ON COLLIQUATIVE DIARRHŒA OR MELTING.
When anything is discharged from the bowels which was not part of the food or drink that was taken, but of the fluids of the body which had flowed to them, (resembling the yellow bile which is continually discharged by vomiting and purging, but differing from it in fetor; and in this, that the alvine discharge is of a darker yellow, of the consistence of the sordes balneorum, oily, and adipose,) the disease is called colliquation or melting. At first the fat and newly-made flesh are dissolved and melted by the heat of the fever; but as the evil is protracted, some of the solid parts themselves are melted down. In this most unfavorable state of fever, a draught of cold water from the coolest fountain is the most proper remedy; likewise cold cataplasms and epithems ought to be applied to the chest and hypochondriac regions, and cooling food to be given.
Commentary. Galen mentions that a colliquative discharge from the bowels was a common symptom of the fatal plague which prevailed in his time. He adds that the fæces were generally of a deep yellow colour, and always fetid. (Comment. in Hippocrat. Epidem. iii.) In another place, he states that it is a fatal practice to bleed or purge in cases of fever complicated with diarrhœa. (Therap. ad Glauc. i.)
Our author borrows from Oribasius (Synops. vi, 30), or Aëtius (v, 91.)
The Arabians treat febrile melting upon general principles, as explained under the head of Diarrhœa.
On the colliquative diarrhœa in fevers, see, further, Prosper Alpinus (de Præs. Vita et Morte Ægrot. vii, 11), and Fabius Paulinus (Prælect. Marc. p. 343.)