The Arabians treat these diseases upon the same principles. Avicenna describes three kinds of hemorrhoids. The first kind are like warts; the next are of a bloody nature; and the third are intermediate between these. He treats them, like the others, either by a surgical operation, or by powerful caustics, containing arsenic, quicklime, and the like. When hemorrhoids are gross, and do not yield to ordinary treatment, Haly Abbas directs us to apply septics, such as arsenic, quicklime, &c.; and when they become black, to dress them with ceruse ointment, or a mixture of rose-oil and the whites of eggs. Procidentia ani he treats, like Celsus, with astringents, such as galls, hypocistis, recrementum ferri, &c. For fissures he recommends emollient ointments containing ceruse, basilicon, wax, &c. Alsaharavius also approves of septic applications containing arsenic, &c. When the piles are old and callous, however, he prefers the surgical operation. He also prudently recommends gentle purgatives. Rhases directs, in cases of procidentia ani, when the anus is swelled, and the gut cannot be got readily replaced, the patient to be put into a warm bath and emollient applications used; afterwards astringents are to be substituted, and a bandage applied. He recommends us to extirpate hemorrhoids with the knife, the cautery, or caustic medicines; but advises bleeding in the first place. He says that when dressed with sandarach they speedily drop off. In prolapsus, when the anus is swelled, he directs us to bathe the parts with a decoction of mallows, &c., then to smear them with mucilaginous substances; to replace the gut, and secure it with a bandage.
The primary sauce mentioned in this Section of our author is thus explained by Lister: “Liquamen optimum. Istud garum a Paulo Ægineta vocabatur πρωτειον, seu primarium, quod nobilissimum illud esset.” (Ap. Apicium, vii, 6.) It was called garum nigrum and garum sociorum by the Romans. (Galen, Med. sec. loc. iii.) It is thus described by Martial:
“Expirantis adhuc scombri de sanguine primo,
Accipe fastosum munera cara garum.”
(Epigr. xiii, 56.)
In the ‘Geoponics’ it is called garum hæmation. (xii.)
SECT. LX.—ON AFFECTIONS OF THE UTERUS; AND, FIRST, OF THE MENSTRUAL DISCHARGE.
With most women the menstrual discharge begins about the fourteenth year of their age; a few have it earlier, in their thirteenth or twelfth; and not a few are later than their fourteenth in having it. There is no limited time for the continuance of it, many having it only for two or three days, most women for five days, some for seven, and a very few have it for twelve days. The menses cease about the fiftieth year of age, a few have them till sixty, and with some they begin to disappear about thirty-five, particularly with such as are fat. When, therefore, the evacuation is delayed, it will be proper to have recourse to baths and potions before the expected period, such as the frequent draughts from sesame, or the headed leek boiled together with pepper and rue. But they must be drunk in Cretan sweet wine. Having drunk a cotylé of it, let the woman excite the flow of the menses by walking; and let her eat calamary, cuttle-fish, and polypus, and other things of the same kind, for they are particularly adapted for raising a tumult in the blood.
Commentary. The following is a list of the ancient authors on midwifery: Hippocrates (de Nat. Mulieb.; de Morbis Mulier.; de Steril.); Galen (de Med. sec. loc. ix, et alibi); Aretæus (Morb. Chron. ii, 11); Oribasius (Med. Collect, iv; Synops. ix); Ruffus Ephesius (i); Actuarius (Meth. Med. iv); Aëtius (xvi); Soranus (de Arte Obitat.); Nonnus (103); Celsus (iv); Octavius Horatianus (iii); Pseudo-Dioscorides (Euporist. ii, 80); Moschion (de Morb. Mulier.; Isagoge Anatomica, xxix); Meletius (de Nat. Hom. 24, seq.); Marcellus (de Medicam. xxxiii); Eros (apud Gynæcia); Pliny (H. N. xxviii, xxx); Avicenna (iii, 21); Serapion (v); Avenzoar (ii, 5); Averrhoes (Collig. iv, 60); Albucasis (Chirurg. ii); Haly Abbas (Theor. ix, 39; Pract. viii); Alsaharavius (Pract. xxv); Rhases (ad Mansor. ix; Contin. xxii.)
The ideas entertained by the ancients respecting the nature of the menstrual discharge may be best learned from Aristotle (de Generat. Animal, i, 19.) Our limits will not permit us to do justice to his theory of conception. It may be proper to state, however, that he holds the menses to proceed from a sanguineous superfluity (περίττωμα) in the system. This theory found a strenuous advocate in his great commentator Averrhoes (Collig. iii, 29); and Button’s views on this subject are very little different. Hippocrates, in like manner, taught that the male semen is a superfluity collected from all parts of the body, and fancied that if any part of the parent was maimed, the semen was defective, and gave rise to a similar defect in the child engendered. (De Aere et Aquis, 52.) Pythagoras called it the froth of the blood and the superfluity of the aliment. (Plutarch de Placitis Philos. v, 3.)