Lastly, The use of medicines cold in the fourth degree, is, To mitigate desperate and vehement pains, stupifying the senses, when no other course can be taken to save life: of the use of which more hereafter.
Of moistening Medicines.
There can be no such difference found amongst moistening medicines, that they should surpass the second degree. For seeing all medicines are either hot or cold, neither heat nor cold, seeing they are extremes, can consist with moisture, for the one dries it up, the other condensates it.
Use. Phylosophers therefore call moisture and dryness, passive qualities, yet have they their operation likewise; for moist medicines lenify and make slippery, ease the cough, and help the roughness of the throat. These operations are proper to medicines moist in the first degree.
Those which are moister, take away naturally strength, help the sharpness of humours, make both blood and spirits thicker, looses the belly, and fits it for purgation.
The immoderate or indiscreet use of them dulls the body, and makes it unfit for action.
Of drying Medicines.
Drying medicines have contrary faculties to these, viz. To consume moisture, stop fluxes, and make such parts dry as are slippery, they make the body and members firm, when they are weakened by too much moisture, that so they may perform their proper functions.
Yet although the members be strengthened by drying medicines, they have notwithstanding their own proper moisture in them, which ought to be conserved, and not destroyed, for without it they cannot consist: If then this moisture be consumed by using, or rather over use of drying medicines, the members can neither be nourished, nor yet perform their proper actions.
Such medicines as are dry in the third degree, being unadvisedly given, hinder the parts of the body they are appropriated to, of their nourishment, and by that means brings them into consumption.