SECT. LXV.—ON DOMESTIC ARTICLES, SUCH AS WINE AND COLD WATER.
Cold water when drunk in a great quantity, and much undiluted sweet wine, more especially after the bath, running, or violent exercises, bring on suffocation and pains. In such cases, venesection quickly had recourse to, and evacuation by clysters, remove the impending danger.
Commentary. Galen says, “Some by taking an immoderate draught of cold water have been instantly seized with dyspnœa, convulsions, and tremors; in a word, their whole nervous system has become affected.” (Meth. Med. ix, 5.)
Dioscorides, Aëtius, and Actuarius concur in recommending the same mode of treatment as our author. The Arabians, however, treat those who have taken a draught of cold water unseasonably in a very different manner from the Greeks. Thus Rhases and Avicenna recommend undiluted wine internally, and the application of a plaster over the liver. The difference between the practice of the Greeks and Arabians may be thus accounted for. A large draught of cold drink may either threaten to prove fatal at once by producing a violent impression upon the nerves of the stomach, or it may superinduce symptoms resembling those of gastritis. In the former case the practice of the Arabians may seem most proper in order to support the heat and powers of the system, whereas that of the Greeks will be indicated when inflammatory symptoms have come on; and, indeed, even the Arabians bled under these circumstances. (Avicenna, iv, 61, 31.) For an immoderate draught of pure wine which has been taken unseasonably, the Arabian authorities concur with the Greek in recommending immediate evacuation of the stomach and venesection, to which they add cold water or whey, with troches of camphor. See in particular Avicenna (iv, 6, 1, 31.)