SECT. LVI.—ON COAGULATED MILK.
Those who take a large draught of milk containing rennet, experience a great feeling of suffocation from its becoming coagulated. In treating them, we may give as an antidote rennet with vinegar, compelling them often to drink of it; also the dried leaves of calamint, and its juice in like manner, or the roots of laserwort, or its juice with oxycrate, thyme with wine, and the lye used by bonnet-makers; but nothing saltish must be given, for thereby the milk becomes more firmly coagulated and is converted into cheese. Neither must we make them vomit, for thereby the coagula being lodged in the stomach will produce suffocation.
Commentary. Gorræus, in his notes on Nicander, remarks that milk only proves prejudicial when taken in great quantity, immediately after the rennet has been added to it, and before it has curdled. See also Matthiolus and Ardoyn (de Venenis). Nicander recommends the same remedies as our author, namely, such as are of a cutting and attenuant nature, as rennet, vinegar, wine, lasewort, &c. Dioscorides forbids all saltish things. Ruffus (ap. Oribas. Med. Col. viii, 24) recommends a clyster of vinegar and natron, or asses’ milk with much salt. Celsus says, with his accustomed brevity, “Si lac intus coit, aut passum, aut coagulum, aut cum aceto laser.” See also Galen (l. c.) Haly Abbas, Rhases, Avicenna and Alsaharavius also recommend rennet with pepper, assafœtida, vinegar, &c. For bad milk which has spoiled on the stomach, all the Arabian authorities concur in recommending first an emetic of hydromel, and afterwards wine with pepper.
Sprengel accounts for the deleterious effects of curdled milk in the same manner as he does for those of bulls’ blood, and remarks, that the acid contained in the rennet of certain animals especially of hares, is well calculated for dissolving and evacuating the coagulum (Comment. in Dioscor. l. c.)
The Arabian authorities treat, among the deleterious substances, of flesh and fish which have been cooked and hung up in a wet place until they have become unwholesome. When eaten in this state, Rhases says they bring on violent vomiting and purging, and may prove fatal unless the proper remedies are applied. For these symptoms he recommends repeated emetics and then purgatives; after which wine and pepper is to be given; and, in the end, the remedies for poisonous mushrooms. (Ad Mansor. viii, 27, 28.) See also Alsaharavius (Pract. xxx, 2, 15); Haly Abbas (Pract. iv.) Haly Abbas recommends vomiting by means of tepid water, oxymel, and salt.
They treat, in like manner, of rancid fruits; which they state act as poisons when eaten in large quantity. For the cure of these they recommend emetics, the rob of bitter grapes, and medicines to whet the appetite. Rhases (ad Mansor. viii, 30); Avicenna (iv. 6; i, 30.)
Avenzoar relates, at considerable length, the history of a case in which delirium and other bad symptoms had been brought on and kept up by drinking out of a cup which had been poisoned with some putrid meat. (i, 9, 9.)