Hippocrates, De haemorrhoidibus
Charles Darwin Adams, Ed.

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Part 6

Another method of curing hemorrhoids:-You must prepare a cautery like the arundo phragmites, and an iron that exactly fits is to be adapted to it; then the tube being introduced into the anus, the iron, red hot, is to be passed down it, and frequently drawn out, so that the part may bear the more heat, and no sore [p. 354]may result from the heating, and the dried veins may heal up. But if you are neither disposed to burn nor excise, having first fomented with plenty hot water and turned out the anus, levigate myrrh, and having burnt galls and Egyptian alum, in the proportion of one and a half to the other things, and as much of melanteria; these things are all to be used in a dry state. The hemorrhoid will separate under the use of these medicines, like a piece of burnt hide. You are to proceed thus until the whole are removed, and a half part of burnt chalcitis does the same thing. But if you wish to effect the cure by suppositories, take the shell of the part fish a third part of plumbago, bitumen, alum, a little of the flos aeris, galls, a little verdigris; having poured a small quantity of boiled honey on these, and formed an oblong suppository, apply until you remove them.