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.)
APPENDIX TO BOOK V.
As no better opportunity is likely to occur, we shall in this place give a short notice of two subjects connected with medical practice, which are entirely omitted by our author.
ON FEIGNED DISEASES, AND THE DETECTION OF THEM.
Galen, we believe, is the only ancient author who has treated professedly of the detection of simulated diseases. He begins his short treatise on this head with remarking, that persons feign diseases from various motives, and that it is expected the physicians should detect such impostures. That, for example, inflammation, erysipelas, and œdema, when produced artificially, ought to be distinguished from the same diseases when they originate in constitutional causes. He adds, that hæmoptysis, hæmatemesis, and bloody discharges from the bowels, are often simulated. Hæmoptysis is simulated by opening a vein in the gums, and sucking blood from it while one affects to cough. Others, he says, affect dementia, fatuity, and insanity, all which cases the vulgar expect that the physician should detect. Inward pain, such as that of colic, he had often known to be simulated, and relates briefly an interesting case in point. He remarks, that experience and natural sagacity will enable a man to expose all impositions of this nature. He gives a very interesting account of the manner in which he detected the nature of a swelling at the knee, that had been produced intentionally by the juice of thapsia (thapsia garganica, deadly carrot?) Feigned inward pains, he remarks, may often be distinguished from the real by the aversion which the malingerer discovers to swallow medicines, which he would be anxious to have given him if he were actually in acute pain; and adds, that the state of the pulse, and the other symptoms of intestinal diseases, will assist in making the detection. (Quomodo coarg. sint qui fing. se Ægrot. t. iii, 388, ed. Basil.)