The Complete Herbal / To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic.

by Nicholas Culpeper

SECTION III.
Of the propriety or operation of Medicines.

CHAPTER I.
Of Emolient Medicines.

The various mixtures of heat, cold, dryness, and moisture in simples, must of necessity produce variety of faculties, and operations in them, which now we come to treat of, beginning first at emolients.

What is hard, and what is soft, most men know, but few are able to express. Phylosophers define that to be hard which yields not to touching, and soft to be the contrary. An emolient, or softening medicine is one which reduceth a hard substance to its proper temperature.

But to leave phylosophy, and keep to physic: physicians describe hardness to be two-fold.

1. A distention or stretching of a part by too much fulness.

2. Thick humours which are destitute of heat, growing hard in that part of the body into which they flow.

So many properties then ought emolient medicines to have, viz. To moisten what is dry, to discuss what is stretched, to warm what is congealed by cold; yet properly, that only is said to mollify which reduceth a hard substance to its proper temperature.