SECT. XLVIII.—ON BURNING OVER THE SPLEEN.
Having stretched the skin which lies over the spleen with hooks, we burn it through by one application of a long ignited cautery so as to form two eschars; and this we do three times so that there may be six eschars formed altogether. But Marcellus by using a trident or trident-shaped cautery formed six eschars at one application.
Commentary. In cases of diseased spleen the Coan surgeons burned eschars on the side affected. (Hippocr. de Affect. intern. and de Affect. 5.)
Aëtius directs us to burn the eschar either with the actual cautery or with caustics. (x, 12.) The ancients used an issue paste, very like the modern, prepared from potass. See above ([s. 9.])
Avicenna recommends the same practice as the Greeks (iii, 15, 1); and so in like manner Haly Abbas (Pract. ix, 76); Albucasis (Chirurg. i, 32); and Rhases (Contin. xx.)
Guido de Cauliaco repeats Albucasis’s description of the process of burning the side in cases of scirrhous spleen. (ii, 2.)