By stomach, I mean that ventricle which contains the food till it be concocted into chyle.
Medicines appropriated to the stomach are usually called stomachicals.
The infirmities usually incident to the stomach are three.
- 1. Appetite lost.
- 2. Digestion weakened.
- 3. The retentive faculty corrupted.
When the appetite is lost, the man feels no hunger when his body needs nourishment.
When digestion is weakened it is not able to concoct the meat received into the stomach, but it putrifies there.
When the retentive faculty is spoiled the stomach is not able to retain the food till it be digested, but either vomits it up again, or causes fluxes.
Such medicines then as remedy all these, are called stomachicals. And of them in order.
1. Such as provoke appetite are usually of a sharp or sourish taste, and yet withal of a grateful taste to the palate, for although loss of appetite may proceed from divers causes, as from choler in the stomach, or putrefied humours or the like, yet such things as purge this choler or humours, are properly called Orecticks, not stomachicals; the former strengthen appetite after these are expelled.
2. Such medicines help digestion as strengthen the stomach, either by convenient heat, or aromatic (viz. spicy) faculty, by hidden property, or congruity of nature.